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THE LIBRARY 
OF 
THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CALIFORNIA 
LOS ANGELES 


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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2007 with funding from 
Microsoft Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/dawnlesaubesOOverhiala 


THE DAWN 
(LES AUBES) 


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THE DAWN 


(LES AUBES) 


BY 


EMILE VERHAEREN 


TRANSLATED BY 


ARTHUR SYMONS 





BOSTON 
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
1915 


Copyright, 1915 
By SMaLL, Maynarp & CoMPANY 
(Incorporated) 


INTRODUCTION 


The poetry of Emile Verhaeren, more than that of any 
other modern poet, is made directly out of the complaining 
voices of the nerves. Other writers, certainly, have been 
indirectly indebted to the effect of nerves on temperament, 
but M. Verhaeren seems to express only so much of a 
temperament as finds its expression through their im- 
mediate medium. In his early books “Les Flamandes,” 
“Les Moines” (reprinted, with “ Les Bords de la Route,” 
containing earlier and later work, in the first of his two 
volumes of collected poems), he began by a solid, heavily 
coloured, exterior manner of painting genre pictures in 
the Flemish style. Such poems as “Les Paysans,” with 
its fury of description, are like a Teniers in verse; not 
Breughel has painted a kermesse with hotter colours, a 
more complete abandonment to the sunlight, wine, and 
gross passions of those Flemish feasts. This first book, 
“Les Flamandes,” belongs to the Naturalistic movement ; 
but it has already (as in the similar commencements of 
Huysmans) so ardent a love of colour for its own sake, 
colour becoming lyrical, that one realizes how soon this 
absorption in the daily life of farms, kitchens, stables, will 
give place to another kind of interest. And in “Les 
Moines,” while there is still for the most part the painting 
of exteriorities, a new sentiment, by no means the religious 
sentiment, but an artistic interest in what is less material, 
less assertive in things, finds for itself an entirely new 

I 


INTRODUCTION 


scheme of colour. Here, for instance, was ‘‘ Cuisson de 
Pain,” in the first book: 


“Dehors, les grands fournils chauffaient leurs braises rouges, 
Et deux par deux, du bout d’une planche, les gouges 
Dans le ventre des fours engouffraient les pains mous. 


“Et les flammes, par les gueules s’ouvrant passage, 
Comme une meute énorme et chaude de chiens roux, 
Sautaient en rugissant leur mordre le visage.” 


Now, in the second, we have “ Soir Religieux ”’: 


“Et voici l’angelus, dont la voix tranquillise 
La douleur qui s’épand sur ce mourant décor, 
Tandis que les grands bras des vieux clochers d’église 
Tendent leurs croix de fer par-dessus les champs d’or.” 


But it is not until “Les Soirs” (the first of the three 
books reprinted in the second volume of the collected 
edition) that we find what was to be the really individual 
style developing. itself. It develops itself at first with a 
certain heaviness. Here is a poet who writes in images: 
good; but the images are larger than the ideas. Wishing 
to say that the hour was struck, he says: 


“ Seul un beffroi, 
Immensément vétu de nuit, cassait les heures.” 


And, indeed, everything must be done “ immensément.” 
The word is repeated on every page, sometimes twice in a 
stanza. The effect of monotony in rhythm, the significant, 
chiming recurrence of words, the recoil of a line upon itself, 
the dwindling away or the heaping up of sound in line after 
line, the shock of an unexpected czsura, the delay and the 
hastened speed of syllables: all these arts of a very conscious 
2 


INTRODUCTION 


technique are elaborated with somewhat too obvious an in- 
tention. There is splendour, opulence, and, for the first 
time, “such stuff as dreams are made of.” Description is 
no longer made for its own sake; it becomes metaphor. 
And this metaphor is entirely new. It may be called ex- 
aggerated, affected even; but it is new, and it is ex- 
pressive: 


“Les chiens du désespoir, les chiens du vent d’automne, 
Mordent de leurs abois les échos noirs des soirs, 
Et l’ombre, immensément, dans le vide, tatonne 
Vers la lune, mirée au clair des abreuvoirs.” 


In “Les Débacles,” a year later, this art of writing in 
coloured and audible metaphor, and on increasingly abstract 
and psychological subjects, the sensations externalized, has 
become more master of itself, and at the same time more 
immediately the servant of a more and more feverish nerv- 
ous organization. 


“Tu seras le fiévreux ployé, sur les fenétres, 
D’ou l’on peut voir bondir la vie et ses chars d’or.” 


‘And the contemplation of this “ fiévreux ” is turned more 
and more in upon itself, finding in its vision of the outer 
world only a mirrored image of its own disasters. The 
sick man, looking down on his thin fingers, can think of 
them only in this morbid, this monastic way: 


“Mes doigts, touchez mon front et cherchez, 1a, 
Les vers qui rongeront, un jour, de leur morsure, 
Mes chairs; touchez mon front, mes maigres doigts, viola 
Que mes veines déja, comme tne meurtrissure 
Bleuatre, étrangement, en font la tour, mes las 
Et pauvres doigts—et que vos longs ongles malades 


3 


INTRODUCTION 


Battent, sinistrement, sur mes tempes, un glas, 
Un pauvre glas, mes lents ct mornes doigts!” 


Two years later, with “ Les Flambeaux Noirs,’ what was 
nervous has become almost a sort of very conscious mad- 
ness: the hand on one’s own pulse, the eyes watching them- 
selves in the glass with an unswerving fixity, but a breaking 
and twisting of the links of things, a doubling and division 
of the mind’s sight, which might be met with, less pic- 
turesquely, in actual madness. There are two poems, “ Le 
Roc” and “Les Livres,” which give, in a really terrifying 
way, the very movement of idea falling apart from idea, 
sensation dragging after it sensation down the crumbling 
staircase of the brain, which are the symptoms of the brain’s 
loss of self-control: 


C’est la que j’ai bati mon ame, 
—Dites, serai-je seul avec mon ame ?— 
Mon ame hélas! maison d’ébéne, 

Ou s’est fendu, sans bruit, un soir, 

Le grand miroir de mon espoir. 


Dites, serai-je seul avec mon ame, 

En ce nocturne et angoissant domaine? 
Serai-je seul avec mon orgueil noir, 
Assis en un fauteuil de haine? 
Serai-je seul, avec ma pale hyperdulie, 
Pour Notre-Dame, la Folie? 


In these poems of self-analysis, which is self-torture, 
there is something lacerating, and at the same time bewilder- 
ing, which conveys to one the sense of all that is most 
solitary, picturesque, and poignant in the transformation of 
an intensely active and keen-sighted reason into a thing 
of conflicting visionary moods. At times, as in the remark- 

4 


INTRODUCTION 


able study of London called “Les Villes,” this fever of the 
brain looks around it, and becomes a flame of angry and 
tumultuous epithet, licking up and devouring what is most 
solid in exterior space. Again, as in “ Les Lois” and “ Les 
Nombres,” it becomes metaphysical, abstract, and law tow- 
ers up into a visible palace, number flowers into a forest: 


“Je suis V’halluciné de la forét des Nombres.” 


That art of presenting a thought like a picture, of which M. 
Verhaeren is so accomplished a master, has become more 
subtle than ever; and 


“ces tours de ronde de Il’infini, le soir, 
Et ces courbes, et ces spirales,” 


of for the most part menacing speculations in the void, 
take visible form before us, with a kind of hallucination, 
communicated to us from that (how far deliberate?) 
hallucination which has created them. Gradually, in “ Les 
Apparus dans mes Chemins,”’ in “Les Campagnes Hal- 
lucinées,” in “ Les Villages Ilusoires,” in “Les Villes Ten- 
taculaires,” the hallucinations become entirely external: it 
is now the country, the village, the town, that is to say, the 
whole organised world, that agonises among cloudy phan- 
toms, and no longer a mere individual, abnormal brain. 
And so he has at once gained a certain relief from what had 
been felt to be too intimately a part of himself, and has 
also surrendered to a more profound, because a more ex- 
tended, ‘consciousness of human misery. Effacing himself, 
as he does, behind the great spectacle of the world, as he 
sees it, with his visionary eyes, in his own violent and 
lethargic country, he becomes a more hopeless part of that 


> 


INTRODUCTION 


conspiracy of the earth against what man has built out of 
the earth, of what man has built out of the earth against 
the earth, which he sees developing silently among the 
grass and bricks. All these books are a sort of philosophy 
in symbols, symbols becoming more and more definite: “Le 
Donneur de Mauvais Conseils,” who drives up to the farm 


gate: 


“La vieille carriole en bois vert-pomine 
Qui l’emmena, on ne sait d’ou, 
Une folle la garda avec son homme 
Aux carrefours des chemins mous. 
Le cheval pait I’herbe d’automne, 
Prés d’une mare monotone, 
Dont l’eau malade réverbére 
Le soir de pluie et de misére 
Qui tombe en loques sur la terre”; 


“Les Cordiers,” the old man spinning his rope against the 
sky, weaving the past into the future: 


“Sur la route muette et réguliére, 
Les yeux fixés vers la lumiére 
Qui frdle en se couchant les clos et les maisons, 
Le blanc cordier visionnaire, 
Du fond du soir auréolaire, 
Attire a lui les horizons”; 


and, finally, the many-tentacled towns, drawing to themselves 
all the strength and sap of the earth: ‘Les Spectacles,” 
“La Bourse,” “Le Bazar,’ the monstrous and material 
soul of towns. 

Contrast these poems with those early poems, so brutal, 
so Flemish, if you would see at a glance all the difference 
between the Naturalistic and the Symbolistic treatment. 

6 


INTRODUCTION 


The subject-matter is the same; the same eye sees; there 
are the same 


“vers batis comme une estrade 
Pour la danse des mots et leurs belles parades.” 


But at first there is merely an eye that sees, and that takes 
the visible world at its own valuation of itself. Later on, 
things are seen but to be re-adjusted, to be set into relation 
with other, invisible realities, of which they are no more 
than the wavering and tortured reflection. And with this 
poet, in his later manner, everything becomes symbol; the 
shop, the theatre, the bank, no less than the old rope-maker 
weaving the horizons together. And, inseparable from sym- 
bol, ideas, primary ideas, come into the work more and more 
effectually. 


“Sur la Ville, d’ot: les affres flamboient, 
Regnent, sans qu’on les voie, 
Mais évidentes, les idées:” 


as he can write, on the last page of “Les Villes Tenta- 
culaires,” which points directly to “ Les Aubes,” in which 
a sort of deliverance through ideas, as you may see, is 
worked out. 


And now I have to explain what I have tried to do in 
my translation of this play. From “ Les Flambeaux Noirs ” 
onwards, all M. Verhaeren’s poems have been in vers libre, 
but a verse very much firmer in rhythm, very much more 
regular in accentuation, than the vers libre of most French 
writers of the present day. “Les Aubes” is written in a 
mixture of prose and verse, which, in France, is a very novel 
experiment indeed. To English readers, accustomed to the 


7 


INTRODUCTION 


Elizabethan drama, nothing can seem more natural than such 
an alteration, marking the rise and fall of emotion and 
solemnity in the speakers. I have translated M. Verhaeren’s 
verse very literally, and I have followed all his rhythms with 
great exactitude. But, for the most part, I have used un- 
rhymed in place of rhymed verse, reserving rhyme for the 
speeches of the Seer, which are in a more definitely stanzaic 
form in the original, and for the ronde at the beginning of 
Scene II of Act IV. It seemed to me that this was the best 
way of conveying M. Verhaeren’s form into English; and, 
having finished my translation, I wrote to him, telling him 
exactly what [had done. He replied: ‘“ Sile vers francais 
sans rime existait, je l’aurais employé moi-méme. Seule- 
ment le vers blanc francais ne me dit rien. En anglais ce 
doit étre mon souhait. Je vous approuve donc entiérement.” 


ARTHUR SYMONS. 


THE DAWN 


PERSONS OF THE DRAMA 


THE Crowp 

Groups: WoRKMEN, BEGGARS, FARMERS, SOLDIERS, WOMEN, YOUNG 
MEN AND WoMEN, PasseErs, Boys, OLD MEN 

JACQUES HERENIEN, tribune 

PierRE HERENIEN, his father 

CLAIRE, his wife 

GEORGES, his son 

HAIneEAU, brother of Claire 

Horpain, captain of the enemy, disciple of Hérénien 

Op GHISLAIN, farmer 

THE Curé 

AN OFFICER 

AN EMISSARY 

A Gipsy 

A Consut of Oppidomagne 

THE SHEPHERD 

THE BeccAR BENOIT 

THE SEER of the Villages 

THE SEER of the Cities 


The groups act as a single person of multiple and 
contradictory aspects 


10 


78 OG S| 
ScENE I 


‘An immense open space into which converge, on the right, the roads 
descending from Oppidomagne; on the left, the paths rising 
from the plains. Lines of trees accompany them as far as the 
eye can see. The enemy has surrounded the town. The coun- 
try is on fire. Great flaring lights in the distance; the tocsin 
sounds. 

Groups of beggars fill the trenches. Others, standing on gravel- 
heaps, scan the distance, and cry to one another. 


THE BEGGARS 


—Look, from this mound you can see the villages all on 
hire: 
—Climb the trees: we can see better. 
[A beggar, clinging to a tree. 
—This way! this way! 


Beccars (looking towards the town) 
—The flames are getting brighter and bigger, towards the 
town. 
—The powder-mills are blowing up. 
[The sound of firing and explosions. 
The works at the port are on fire, and the quays, and the 
docks. The petroleum-sheds have caught fire. Yards 
and masts burn black, and make crosses against the 
sky! 


iI 


THE DAWN ACT TSC: 


Beccars (looking towards the plains) 


—The country is all red, over the plains. The fire has got 
hold of Hérénien’s farm: they are throwing the furni- 
ture into the street, pell mell. They are bringing the 
beasts out of the stable with covered heads. They are 
carrying out the old sick father on his great bed. 

—It is the farmer’s turn now to have death on his heels. 

—Ah! what a fine, quick vengeance! They are cast out 
themselves, they who cast us out. The crowd of them 
heaps the highways. All our curses have carried; all 
our blasphemies, all our prayers, all our angers! 

—See there, the cattle flying to the fens, 

The stallions rear and snap the trace in two, 

And snort against this woeful torch; 

And one has fled, with burning at his heels 

And death upon his flying mane, 

He turns his head about, and bites the flame 

That eats upon his neck; 

Look all of you, and see the hands 

Of madmen piling up the flame with pitchforks. 

—The bells madden in the wind. Churches and towers 
crumble. God Himself might have fear. 

—Who knows why this war was unchained? 

—All the kings desire Oppidomagne. They desire it to 
the ends of the earth. 

[People rush up excitedly, and disappear confusedly 
in every direction. Some stop, and cry: 

—The farmers are piling up their furniture and_ their 
clothes on wagons; they are coming towards the 
town; they will pass here. 


12 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


THE GROUP OF BEGGARS 


—This is the moment to make for Oppidomagne. 
—Follow them. 


Tue Beccar BENOIT 


Follow them? And of what race are you, then? 

Since you and I have been revolters, vagabonds, 

Yes, you and I, all of us, all the time, 

Have not these farming, homestead folk 

Bent us and broken us with aching poverty? 

They, they have been the bread, 

And we, we have so sorely been the hunger, 

That the sharp flames which eat 

Their bursting granaries now 

Seem to me like our very teeth 

And the malevolent tearing of our vehement nails! 

Since I have come and gone, and come and gone, and 
come again, 

Barring with evil luck 

The gates at which I beg, 

My hands have spread the sickness that they breed, 

My hands have rooted up their dead, 

Have stolen their dead, my aged hands 

Have gagged their daughters, and have ravished them; 

I hate them as a man may hate 

The evillest thing upon the earth; 

And now at least let them be bashed 

With their own pikes and their own poles. 


AN Otp Man 


What is the good of bashing them? They will do no 
more harm; they are more wretched than we are. 


13 


THE DAWN ACT I. SC. I. 


Tue Beccar BENOIT 


Be silent, you are too old to be a man any longer. 
[fresh bands hurry along the Oppidomagne road. 
A group of workmen appears. One of them 
speaks to the beggars. 


Tue WorKMAN 
Has Heérénien passed yet ? 


A BeccarR (to the workman) 
The shepherd knows him. Ask him. 


THE WorkKMAN (to the shepherd) 
Has Hérénien passed here? 


THE SHEPHERD (in rags) 

I am waiting for him. He has gone to look after his 
father. I want to see him again. I cured him when 
he was a child. 

THE WoRKMAN 
He is sure to come. We will wait for him together. 


THE SHEPHERD 
How has he left the city? His enemies themselves ought 
to have kept him there. 
THe WorKMAN 


Hérénien does what he likes. His father was dying at 
the village, and called him. 


THE SHEPHERD 
Do you think he will conquer Oppidomagne? 
14 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


THE WorRKMAN 


Is he not the master of the people? 

He is that wonderful and sacred thing 

That lives, beyond the shadow of this hour, 

Already in the future, which he touches; 

None better have discerned than he 

How much of folly mixed with how much wisdom waits 
To bring the new to-morrows in; 

His clear books cast a light on all we think about. 
*Tis there we other mortals learn 

What is the way that leads to good 

And what exalts a man, at such an hour, to be a God. 


THE SHEPHERD 


You are one of those who love and defend him in the 
city. 


THE WorRKMAN 


Hundreds we are, thousands we are 
Who worship him, and follow him, 
No matter where he goes, unto the very end. 

[The workman goes on ahead, to watch for 
Hérémen. More people in flight, then a group 
of peasants dragging after them carts and 
hand-carts. The horses have clumbed the hill, 
with heavy loads. 


OLD GHISLAIN 


Our beasts are tired out. Let them get wind again. 
Hallo, there, you beggars, has that scoundrel Hérénien 
passed this way? 


15 


THE DAWN ‘ACT I. SC. I. 


Tue Beccar BENOIT 


Old Ghislain, be silent. 


OLp GHISLAIN 


Be silent! be silent! why? who for? Hérénien is one of 


you then? 


THe BeccAr BENOIT 


Old Ghislain, we are the power here, and we can strike 


you down, before you have so much time as to cry 
murder. If, for all these years and these years, you 
have thrown to us at your doors the refuse of your 
pigs and the washings of your kitchen, we too, for all 
these years and these years, have we not given you 
our prayers and our aves? We are quits for the past, 
and the present is ours. 

[He advances towards Father Ghislain menacingly. 


A PEASANT (running up) 


Old Ghislain, Old Ghislain, your farm, “ Tinkling 


Meadow,” has spread the fire to the whole of “ Wolf 


Piawi,” 
The trees are burning, on the roads, 
And the whole fir-wood snorts 
And cries and howls aloud, 
And all the flames spire up, 
Up to the clouds, 
And the flames bite the very sky! 


Otp GHISLAIN 


Well, and what then? and what has that to do with me? 


Let all the plain and all the woods begone, 
16 


ACT 1.'8C.. 1; THE DAWN 


And let the wind, the air, and the sky burn, 
And let the earth itself break as a pebble breaks. 
| With a change of tone. 
Just now this beggar talked of killing me. 
[To the beggar Benoit. 
Well, do it, then; be quick with you! 
Here are my hands, here are my arms, that I have sold 
For a vain labour ; here too is my obstinate brain ; 
Here is my skin withered in all its pores, 
Here is my back, here are the rags of me, 
The ruin that I drag about 
All the long years, all the long years! 
Truly I ask myself, why is it that I live? 
I dig a field the frost will reap, 
I farm the meadows that are evil-starred ; 
All that my father hoarded up, farthing by eats all 
That he had squeezed, and hid, and burrowed, like a 
miser, 
I have lost all, eaten it all. 
I have implored my sons: they have devoured me; 
They have been swallowed up in the unfruitful town, 
They have preferred a life unfruitful, infamous; 
Hamlets and little towns are dead; 
Oppidomagne has sapped the strength of them, 
Oppidomagne has drained the blood of them; 
And now, behold 
In every acre and in. every close 
Branching abroad the several maladies 
Of water and of earth and air and sun! 


A PEASANT 
Your sorrows are ours. We are.all equally wretched. 
17 


THE DAWN ACT I. SC. I. 


OLp GHISLAIN 


When I was but a child, we feasted sowing-time, 
The soil was kindly then to folk and to horned beasts, 
The flax came up like happiness in flower, 
But now, but now men fear the earth. 
And surely needs must something have been violated, 
Some sacred and some obscure thing ; 
Now ’tis the coal that all belongs to, kept, 
Once, in the covering night. 
The netted rails, upon the plains bestarred 
With golden signals, swarm; 
Trains graze the meadow-lands, and pierce the banks; 
The living skies are eaten up with piercing smoke ; 
The grass bleeds, and the virgin herb, harvest itself, 
Feed on the sulphur’s poisonous breath. 
*Tis now 
That, terrible in victory, come forth 
Iron, and lead, and fire; 
And hell itself comes forth with them! 
[ The beggars recoil, and cease to threaten. 


A BEGGAR 
Poor man! 


O.Lp GHISLAIN 


Poor man! But no! 

[Drawing towards him a peasant, and pointing to 
an enclosure which is burning. 

You think, do you, that it was the enemy set fire to my 
enclosure? Undeceive yourselves. [Showing his 
hands.| It was these two hands. 

And my woods by “ Firefly Pond”? These hands again. 

18 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


And my granaries and my ricks? These always. 
No, no, Old Ghislain isn’t a poor man. It is he, 
he only perhaps, who sees clear. We don’t respect 
our fields; we lose patience with the slow and sure 
of things; we kill the germs; we overheat them; 
we arrange, we reason, we contrive. The earth isn’t 
a wife now; it’s a kept woman! 

And now, see how the enemy annihilates it! 

Where it was wounded by the town, 

’Tis burnt by war, the torch of war; 

Where the wise man had wellnigh drained it dry, 

The bullets fire it now. 

Alas, alas, this is the death of it! 

There is no need of rain or dewfall now, 

There is no need of snow about the mountain’s head, 

Nor yet of sun, nor of months clear and sweet, 

And it were better at one stroke 

To end, ending the country-side. 


A PEASANT 
Truly, Old Ghislain is not sound in his head. 


ANOTHER 
It is a crime to blaspheme the earth. 


ANOTHER 


We do not know what to believe. 
[The village Seer appears; he hums, imitating by 
his gestures the flight of the fiery crows. 


THE SEER 


The forests fly and the meadow flows, 
And the storm puts ruddy fingers forth 


19 


THE DAWN ACT I; SCial: 


In crosses to the south and north. 
It is the hour of the Fiery Crows. 


They swoop on house and they sweep on hedge, 
With frantic claws and wings stretched wide, 
And with their burning plumes they fledge 

The shifting skies on every side. 


So swift they wing from banks and briars 
Their unreturning passage out, 

They seem the messengers of the fires 
That ring the whole round world about. 


Terror attends without a sound 

The mystery of their silent flight ; 

Their beaks are sharp to rend the ground, 
And savage there to ravage there 

The very heart of earth from our delight. 


The seeds we sow, ere we have sown them, die, 
The hayricks, with their leaping flames that wing 
Their flying way towards the sunsetting, 

Seem, in the smoke that whirls them high, 

Like wild and bloody horses galloping. 


This is the hour that was foretold. 
Ho, bells! ho, bells! the bells have tolled; 
Toll for the death of harvest, and the death of all. 
This is the hour that was foretold. 
Ho, the death-bells! ho, the death-bells! the bells have 
tolled ; 
Toll the death-bells for the world’s funeral. 
20 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


Otp GHISLAIN 
Ah well, it is he who is in the right, the seer, the mad- 
man, he, whom we all mocked, whom I mocked 
myself, and whom I have never understood. Ah, 
the formidable light is there now. 
[He points to the horizon. 
But he knew it long ago. And we were there, all of us, 
with an old hope, with our old illusions, putting the 
poor little bar of our common-sense between the 
spokes of the terrible wheels of destiny. 

[A troop of young folks from the villages, farm 
labourers, workmen, stable-maids, beggars, carry 
forward Pierre Hérénien on a litter. A priest 
accompanies them. The dying man signs to 
them that he suffers too much, and that they 
must stop. 


Jacques HERENIEN 
Here, my friends. Set him down gently. 
[Helping those who carry him. Then, as if speaking 
to himself: 
Poor old man, poor old man! who could not die in his bed, 
like his father! Oh, these wars, these wars, they must 
be hated with a diamond-like hatred. 


PIERRE HERENIEN 
Hérénien, Hérénien! 


JAcQuEes H&RENIEN 


Here I am, father, close to you, close to your hands and 
your eyes; close to you; as in the old times, as in 
mother’s times, so close, that I can hear your heart beat. 

2i 


THE DAWN ACT I. SC. I. 


Do you see me? do you hear me? Do you feel that it is 
I, and that I love you always? 


PIERRE HERENIEN (breathing heavily) 


This time, it is the end. You will not be able to carry me 
to your home, in Oppidomagne. I am happy because 
the plains are all about me. I have one favour to ask 
of you, that you do not forbid the old curé to come to 
me. 


Jacques HERENIEN 


My father, you shall be obeyed in every will and wish. 
Shall I go further off? 


PIERRE HERENIEN 


I must be alone to confess. 
[Hérénien goes aside. The priest approaches. Old 
Ghislain accosts the tribune timidly. He speaks to 
him during the confession. 


OLp GHISLAIN 


Monsieur Hérénien I see you are always good. I thought 
otherwise. You rule Oppidomagne, and in our farms 
we talk of you. My sons defend you. Perhaps they 
are right. But tell me, now that the country is dead, 
how are we going to live? Where shall we find a 
corner to sow the seed, and grow the corn? Where 
shall we find an acre that the smoke and the sewers and 
the poisons and the war have not spoilt ? tell me, tell me! 

[Hérénien remains silent. His whole attention is 
given to his father. He merely shrugs his shoulders 
slightly when Old Ghislain has done speaking. 

ag 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


Tue SHEPHERD (who has slowly approached Hérénien) 


Jacques, do you remember me? 


Jacques HERENIEN 
What! you are still alive, old shepherd? 
[Embraces him with great emotion. 
THE SHEPHERD 


I went a great way off, yonder, for years; I have seen new 
and marvellous countries. One wanders on like that, 
from day to day, from moor to moor, and one gets back 
in time to see someone die! 


PIERRE HERENIEN 


I ask pardon of all whom I have offended. 


THE CuRE 


Do not be troubled, you were a christian, you will be saved. 
[The priest absolves him. 


JAcQuES HERENIEN (leading the shepherd up to the 
dying man) 
Father, this is the shepherd; you know him well, the shep- 


herd of “ Tinkling Meadow,” the oldest of your serv- 
ants and of your friends. 


PIERRE HERENIEN 


[Looking for a long time at the shepherd, and then, 
all of a sudden, recognising him, seizina his arm, 
and drawing him towards him. In almost a firm 
voice: 


23 


THE DAWN ACT I. SC. I. 


When I am dead, shepherd, destroy all the old seeds. They 
are full of evil germs; they are rotten; they are mouldy. 
It is not with them that the soil shall have its espousals. 
And you, who have been everywhere, you shall sow 
new seed in my fields and in my meadows; living seed, 
fresh seed, good seed that you have seen and found 
good; yonder, in the virgin countries of the earth. 
[A pause. The shepherd bows his head and kneels. 
The beggars and the porters do the same. 
And now turn me to the sun. 
[He is obeyed; but in the west, where the sun is then 
going down, the burning villages illuminate the 
country. The heat reaches to the dying man. 


A PEASANT (pointing to Pierre Hérénien) 
The shadow of the fire passes over his face. 


ANOTHER 
He turns to the fire. 


ANOTHER (to those about Pierre Hérénien) 


Take care, take care, he must not see the flames. 


ANOTHER 
Turn him to the right. 


ANOTHER 
This way, this way, to the right, to the right. 
[But the old man clings to the litter, and raises him- 
self, his face towards the setting sun and the fires. 


ANOTHER 
Poor man! if he knew! 
24 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


PIERRE HERENIEN (in a scarcely audible voice) 


Jacques Heérénien, come close to me, close. Let me die 
touching you with my fingers (he caresses him), and 
looking that way with my eyes at what I have loved 
most in the world. I have loved you to distraction ; 
I have never denied you; I have almost blessed the 
sorrows that you have given me; and, while I have 
loved you, I have loved the earth. I have lived with 
the sun, as with God; it was the visible master of 
things. It would have been like a punishment if I had 
died in the night, in its absence. Happily, it is there 
before me, and I reach out my arms to it. (He lifts 
himself towards the conflagration.) I can see it no 
longer, but I still feel the good, conquering light. 


JAcQUES HERENIEN murmurs: 


Father! father! 
[not knowing whether he should disabuse his father, 
or see in these words a sudden prediction. 


PIERRE HERENIEN 


I feel it, I love it, I understand; it is from there, now, that 
the only springtides now possible must come! 

[He falls back, and dies: Jacques Hérénien embraces 

his father, pressing his lips on his mouth as if he 

would gather the first truth that has ever left them. 


Jacques HERENIEN 


Did he know what he was saying? “ The only springtides 
now possible! ” 
[Slowly Hérénien returns to himself out of his reverie. 


25 


THE DAWN ACT.4: SC. I. 


The beggars, peasants, and workmen surround him. 
The shepherd holds his hands and draws him close. 
The porters raise the body and move onward. At 
this moment a troop of women and children coming 
from the city turn into the open space from the 
upper roads. It is led by old men. 

AN Op Man (stopping and pointing to Pierre Hérénien) 


A dead man! and Hérénien following the bier! 


ANOTHER 
And this crowd? 
ANOTHER 


It is the whole country-side flocking towards Oppidomagne. 


ANOTHER 


Do they suppose they will be welcome there? 
[He calls: 


Hérénien! Hérénien! 
H&RENIEN 
Who calls me? 
THE Otp MAN 
Oppidomagne has shut itself in within its walls; it will not 
permit the plain to send it its vagabonds and its dead! 
HERENIEN 


I am returning home; I have lost my father; I wish to bury 
him myself, and withdraw him from pillage and prof- 
anation. 


26 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


THE OLp Man 
They will drive you back with bullets, they are turning out 
all who do not help in the defences. 
ANOTHER OLD Man 


They are blowing up the bridges. The ramparts are bris- 
tling with troops. 


ANOTHER 


The city no longer knows whom it casts out. No one will 
recognise you. 
ANOTHER 
It is mad to go that way. 


ANOTHER 
It is risking your life. 


ANOTHER (entreatingly) 


Stay with us, among us. You will save us. 


HERENIEN 


I swear to you that I will enter Oppidomagne. If you 
doubt, follow me. 


An Op Man 
We cannot. 
A PEASANT 
Better die in our own homes. 
[The beggars, the old men, and some peasants remain. 


The rest follow Hérémen. The funeral train dis- 
appears slowly. 


27 


THE DAWN ACT IGSCl 1 
AN OLp Man 


Hérénien is the only man still firm and stable, in these hours 
of suspended thunder. Perhaps, after all, they will 
welcome him. 


ANOTHER 
As for those who follow him, they will all be killed. 


ANOTHER (turning towards the country) 


Look yonder; the enemy teaches the elements to make war. 
He encircles them, deploys them, masters them, throws 
them forward. 


ANOTHER 


And the country once dead, they will destroy the cities. 


Aw Otp MAN oF THE Towns (older than the others) 


O these cities! these cities! 
And their tumults and their outcries 
And their wild furies and their insolent attitudes 
Against the brotherhood of men; 
O these cities! and their wrath against the skies, 
And their most terrible, most bestial, show, 
And their stocked market of old sins, 
And their vile shops, 
Where wreathe, in knots of golden grapes, 
All the unclean desires, 
As, on a time, garlands of flowery breasts 
Wreathed the white bodies of Diana’s maids! 
These cities! 
The sense of youth is withered up in them; 
The sense of heroism is sapped in them; 

28 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


The sense of justice, as a useless thing, is cast away from 
them. 

O these cities! these cities! 

That spread themselves abroad like heaps of rottenness, 

Like soft or vehement breeds of slime 

Whose mouths and suckers wait to suck 

The noble blood of all the world! 


A Peasant (to the old man) 


Without you, the people of cities, our harvests would flour- 
ish, our barns would run over with corn! Without 
you, we should still be strong, healthy, and tranquil; 
without you, our daughters would not be prostitutes, 
nor our sons soldiers. You have soiled us with your 
ideas and with your vices, and it is you who let loose 
war upon us. 


ONE FROM THE Towns (to the peasants) 


It is of you that we should complain. Why do you flock in, 
so many and so: greedy? From your fields you hasten 
to us to traffic with us, to steal from us, and with so 
stubborn a mind, so narrow, so bitter, and so violent a 
soul, that you are scarcely to be distinguished from 
bandits. You have set your malice and your thievish- 
ness behind all our counters. You have cumbered little 
by little all the desks of the world. If the age grinds 
its teeth with a great noise of meddling and servile 
pens, it is your millions of hands that were willing to 
copy till death. 


ONE FROM THE VILLAGES 
You had need of us. You filled our plains with your ap- 
peals. 


aon, 


THE DAWN ACT I. SC. I. 


ONE FROM THE TOWNS 


You are the dough that mediocrity kneads, the regiments 
that nullity numbers. You are the cause of slow usury, 
idleness, and sluggishness. Without you, the city 
would still be nervous, light, valiant; without you, sur- 
prise, vivacity, daring might have come back again. 
Without you, slumber would not have paralysed life, 
nor death soaked space with blood. 


AN Otp MAN 


Eh, but say now, do you think the enemy is waiting all this 
time, with folded arms, until you have settled your dis- 
putes? If our city perishes, certainly we might swathe 
it in a shroud woven of all the needless words, of all 
the meaningless discussions, of all the loquacity and elo- 
quence, lavished upon it for centuries. The talkers are 
the only guilty ones. 


ANOTHER 


Everything has conspired against Oppidomagne. There are 
a thousand causes which ruin it, as there are a thousand 
worms that attack a corpse. Happily there is always 
some Christ, far off, on the horizon. 


ANOTHER 


Yesterday, the gravest insurrection terrified the city. The 
people took refuge in the cemetery, which overlooks the 
old quarters. The tombs served for ramparts. They 
are on strike. The Regent’s soldiers surround it and 
cut it off. 


30 


ACT I. SC. I. THE DAWN 


A PEASANT 
Oppidomagne is besieged, then, and besieging. 


THE Otp Man 
As they: did at Rome, the crowd has made an Aventine. 


ANOTHER 


O the foul shame of being one of this degraded race, 
Whose mortal and whose trumpeting wantonness 
Affrights the very reason of the earth. 
Now in these hours of thunder in the air, 
Instead of setting to, 
Now at the last, to seek for strength out of the common 
strength, 
It falls apart, it spreads abroad, it drops away. 
Say, is there then no longer some unwavering light, 
Is there no longer then an axiom of aught, 
Is there no longer a strong hand with us 
To scourge the wandering flock of these soft wills of ours? 
Say, is there then a man no more? 
[The village Seer, who has never ceased roaming to 
and fro, prophesies: 


THE SEER 


The times which were to come have come at last, 
Wherein the city, long the mirror of all eyes, 

The marvellous mirror that had glassed 

The eyes of the world, 

Scatters the glory of its memories. 


Oppidomagne! 
With thy quays, columns, bridges, thy triumphal arch, 
38 


THE DAWN ACT 1. SCol 


Behold against thy pride 
The whole horizons march! 


Oppidomagne ! 

With thy towers, monuments, belfries, far and wide, 
3ehold in dlood of fire written upon thy walls 

The sign and seal of funerals! 


Oppidomagne! Now is the hour 
When all things fixed shall crumble into sand, 
Unless without delay, 
This day, 
Some mighty one puts forth his hand! 
An Otp Man 

Oh, whoever he is, how we shall all shout for him, and how 

we shall be the first to bow down to him! 

THE SEER 


This one that we await 

Shall be so great, 

That needs must all you rise to him, maybe 
If you would know that this indeed is he. 


An O_tp Man 
He is not yet born. 
ANOTHER 
No one can guess him. 
ANOTHER 


No one proclaims him. 


32 


ACT I. 8C.-I1. THE DAWN 


ANOTHER 
And Jacques Hérénien? 


ANOTHER 
Jacques Hérénien? He is mad! 


Scen_E IIT 


As the curtain rises, a cordon of horse soldiers bars the gate to 
Oppidomagne. The soldiers are at work undermining the 
bridges across the river. Patrols mount guard on the slope and 
the ramparts. A general, field-glass in hand, inspects the 
horizon. He watches what is going on, while a messenger runs 
up, handing an order to the officer in command of- the cavalry. 


THE OFFICER (reading) 

“Orders are given to admit no one into the city; except 
the tribune Jacques Hérénien. It is important that he 
should realise the favour that is shown him. He is to 
be opposed as a matter of form. 

(Signed) The Regency of Oppidomagne.”’ 
[Hérénien appears on the main road, followed by the 
crowd of ragged men, women, workmen, farmers, 
and old men. Finding that entry will be difficult, he 
advances by himself to the officer. 


HERENIEN 


I am of those who must be heard. Oppidomagne is the 
city where I have grown up, suffered, fought for my 
ideas, which are the greatest that a man can bear about 
with him. I loved Oppidomagne when it seemed in- 
vincible. To-day I desire my place among those who 


33 


THE DAWN ACT I. SC. 1. 


die for her. And I desire the like for all those who 
are here, for all whom I have met with on the way. It 
is I who have called them to follow me. I have turned 
back towards courage the flood that was going down 
to cowardice. 


THE OFFICER 


I know who you are, but I cannot alter the orders I have 
received. 
HERENIEN 
What are the orders ? 


THE OFFICER 


To keep that barrier shut. 
[He points to the gate of the city. 


HERENIEN 


Then it must be that this Oppidomagne, 

At the tremendous hour 

When mountainous woe and terror fall upon its pride, 
With the mere poor and little words of a command 
Shuts to its gates, 

Shuts from its door 

Those that are bringing it 

Their blood, their hearts, 

And the most vehement flame of all their loves! 

I, who so oft at night-time, at the harbour-side, 
Have seen the seas 

Press on and cast abroad in it 

The formidable and free universe, 

Even I who love her, be she evil or good, 

I who so strangely love, I who so blindly love, 


34 


ACT I, SC, IL THE DAWN 


That I am as a son, yet passionate as a lover, 

I must go forth from her, and like a hunted beast! 

An order! But it is such orders that ruin a people. Do 
you reckon up the number of defenders when the sor- 
row is infinite? Do you separate for death those that 
the same danger unites? I insist that you make room 
for all. 

THE OFFICER 

Impossible. 

[Hérénien goes up to the corpse of his father, and un- 
covers his head and shoulders. 


HERENIEN 


For twenty years this man there was a soldier; 

He served your leaders over the whole earth, 

He has fought at the poles, in the desert, and on the sea; 
Thrice he has crossed Europe from end to end 

In a tempestuous cloud 

Of frantic flags and golden eagles and great lights! 

Is it to him you close the gates of Oppidomagne? 


THE OFFICER 


To all who are with you. 


HERENIEN 


Know, then, that it is in the name of the clearest, simplest, 
most unvarying law that I appeal to your honour as a 
man. In a few days this plain will be ruin, putrefac- 
tion, and blood. You have a mere word to say, and all 
our lives, to which we all have a right, will be saved. 
The help that men owe to men, you who bear arms, 


30 


THE DAWN ACT I. SC. Il. 


you first of all owe to us. This duty wipes out all 
others. There was a time when the very name of 
army and of watchword was unknown. 


THE OFFICER 
Disperse, disperse. 


HERENIEN 


[He looks towards the vast crowd which follows him, 
reckons up the number of the soldiers with a glance, 
and goes up to his dead father. 

I ask the pardon of this dead man for desecrating his funeral 
with blood. 

[At this moment the general, who observes the scene 


from the height of the rampart, approaches the 
officer. 


HERENIEN (to the crowd) 


I have used all means, there remains but one. You all 
know it. We are a thousand, and these, but a few. 
(Pointing to the soldiers.) Some among them have 
fathers and children among you. They are ours; they 
will let us pass. Let the women come forward: they 
will not fire on them. 

[Advancing alone, while the crowd forms in order. 
To the soldiers: 

He who commands you bids you commit a crime. Disobey 
him. The right is yours. 

[Already the general has rejoined the officer, and 
reprimands him. The words “stupidity” and 
“folly” are heard. The general advances rapidly 
towards Hérénien and salutes him. 


36 


ACT IL SC.-E, THE DAWN 


THE GENERAL 
Jacques Hérénien, enter Oppidomagne. The Regency bids 
you welcome. 


HERENIEN 


At last! I knew that you had need of me, and that it is 
in your interest that I come into your midst. 
[Pointing to the crowd. 
And all these follow me; the old men, the children, the 
women, they shall all return home, they will all be 
useful. And you, my father, you shall rest in the 
tomb where my two children sleep already. 

[The general makes no objection. The ranks open. 
Jacques Hérénien and some workmen enter the city, 
but no sooner have they passed than suddenly, at 
the officer’s command, the ranks close. The body of 
Pierre Hérénien, the porters, the old men, the peas- 
ants, the women and the children are thrust back. 
Fresh battalions hastening up lend their aid. 
Jacques Hérénien, astonished, turns to make his 
way back. He is heard to cry: “ Cowardice,”’ 
“ Treason,’ “Infamy.” But the tumult covers his 
voice. He is violently hurried into the city. And 
the howling crowd is driven back into the plain. 


A It 
ScENE I 


Hérénien’s house. Door to right; commonplace furniture; stove at 
back. Things lying about pell-mell. On the table, clothes that 
are being mended, children’s toys. Heaps of books on the chairs. 


37 


THE DAWN ACT Ii: SC. 


Claire, Hérénien’s wife, finishes lighting the lamps. She waits. 
All at once there is a noise of cheering in the street. Hérénien 
enters. He clasps his wife in a long embrace. 


HERENIEN 


We have buried my father to the left of the little ones, 
under the yew-tree which overlooks our burial-place. 
He will rest there as he did in the village; his body 
will mingle with the elementary life of the herbs and 
plants that he loved so much. 


CLAIRE 
Did they spy on you? 
[During this scene Hérénien changes his black clothes 
for indoor things. Impression of home. 


HERENIEN 


I don’t know. There were only a few of us. On the way 
back, we passed the crowd; newsboys were calling the 
news of the Aventine. Everybody made for the pa- 
pers. Some men carried torches and sang. Along the 
boulevards and avenues houses lay open, split or pierced 
by the bombs. The rubbish was all over the pavements. 
Not a single gas-lamp was lighted. At the National 
Place a quarry-man called my name: that was all. 
When they allowed me to bring my father into Oppi- 
domagne—after God knows what difficulties !—I prom- 
ised that he should be buried without any crowd of 
people. I have kept my word. 

[Finding a roll of bank-notes on the writing-desk: 

What is this? 


38 


Wer 11.801 THE DAWN 


CLAIRE 


They have sent the remainder of the account. 
[Taking a note out of her pocket. 
Look. Your last book has been read everywhere. 


HERENIEN (looking at the letter) 


They must read and discuss me; they must hunger and 
thirst after my justice! 

[He puts the letter on the table, and opens the window. 
Going nearer to Claire. 

I thought of us, during that simple and homely funeral. 
I would like to have felt you by my side, when the 
coffin sank into the earth! My heart was so tortured, 
so full of pent-up tenderness, so walled up within my- 
self. Why had I not your hands in mine, to mark there 
the half of my mourning! 

[He takes her hand. 
You are indeed my sweet and valiant one. You know 
me, you understand me, before you alone I dare be 
without compunction what I truly am: a poor human 
being, seldom calm, full of vehement pride and tender- 
ness, the more exacting because I love the more. 
Where is the boy? 


CLAIRE (points to the room at the right) 
In our room, asleep. 


HERENIEN 


How often I drove my father to despair! My fits and 
starts of will were so wild that he used to beat me, and 
I cried out under his blows, and shrieked, and yelled 
at him all the same just what I pleased. And now to- 


39 


THE DAWN ACT Tie 8Cay 


day I would strangle my son if he were to irritate 
me. 

[A shell bursts not far from the house. Hérénien 
and Claire rush to the window. The crowd ap- 
plauds Hérénien. 

This, now, is the best time to love. There is nothing like 
these crises and alarms for bringing people closer to- 
gether. I seem to see you in the first months of our 
love; you seem to me even more beautiful; I bring you 
my love just as sincere; just as ardent, just as absolute 
as ever. 


CLAIRE 


And I love and serve you with all my soul. 


HERENIEN 


This funeral (in which some part of myself has gone, I 
know not what, a part of my life, my childhood) tore 
me away from my burning existence, given up to all, 
taken by all, scattered wide, far from you, far from 
us, all through Oppidomagne. I seemed to myself to 
be in the village, in the desolate land of the visionary 
plains; prowling, at night, on the heath, or astride of 
the wild colts in my father’s fields. I remembered 
the shepherds, the servants, the maid-servants. I re- 
membered the way to school, to church, and the exact 
sound of the parish bell. I was so sad and so happy; 
I longed to see you again, you and the child. (Put- 
ting his arm round Claire.) And now, let me see your 
eyes, your pale, sweet eyes, that love me more than all 
others, and are the fairest lights in the world. (Lean- 
ing his face over Claire.) Are they not faithful, and 


40 


ACT II. SC. I. THE DAWN 


tender, and peaceful, and shining, and am I not foolish 
to make them weep sometimes? 


CLAIRE 
Your words go further than your thoughts, when they are 
unkind. 
HERENIEN 


Oh! I am not one of those who love tamely. But you, you 
love me all the same, although you know my terrible 
life, my real life, my real reason of being on the earth. 


CLAIRE (with a slight tone of reproach) 
You talk to me of that so often! 


HERENIEN 
And I will talk of it to you again; I will be brutal, and 
weary you, because it is my passion to be absolutely 
sincere with you. You would be my wife no longer, 
if I had to hide anything from you. I would rather 

see you weep than lie to you. 


CLAIRE 
If you were otherwise, I should love you the less. 


H&ERENIEN 
And besides, you know very well that I exaggerate; that 
really, when I assign you so small a space in my life, 
I deceive myself and you. 


CLAIRE 
Ah, be what you will, tormentor or despot, what does it 
matter? You belong to me, you and our child, to 
all my love. 
4I 


THE DAWN ACT II. SC. I. 


HERENIEN 


Ah, you indeed are my wife! 

When, on a night of June, 

Long ago now, sweetly you gave me your soul, 

Did I not swear that my lips 

Never again should kiss 

Another’s lips, 

Another’s breast? 

You were the flower of all the lakes and mists 

That my impetuous hands 

Have wrested from my haggard country 

And planted in the heart of Oppidomagne; 

And ’tis the soil, the waters, and the meadow-lands, 

That I behold and worship in your naked eyes. 

And shall not we remain, hand in hand, heart to heart, 

Lost in the love that sets us free, 

Adoringly, forgivingly, exultingly, 

While the insatiable days eat up the time 

Our fates shall let us live? 

Death like a fire enrings us round about, 

Night is an ambush set, and evening a disaster; 

And see, in the insensate skies, 

The stars hurtle together and consume, 

And the hot fiery ashes fall! 

[Hérénien’s child comes in to embrace his father, who 

hardly notices and seems to have forgotten him. 
The crowd goes by, with vociferous shouting. 
Hérénien rushes to the window. Shouts are heard. 
“The Exchange ts on fire!” “The Arsenal is on 
fire!” “The Port 1s on fire!” The reflection of 
the flames illuminates the room. 


42 


ACT II. SC. I. THE DAWN 


HERENIEN 


And what if this indeed ended Oppidomagne! 
And if these bonfires emptied from their mountain-tops 
The smoking blood of sacrifice? 

Oppidomagne 

Has gathered to its codes and ratified in laws 

All that was once a hidden crime, a crafty murder, 
Deceit or theft against true justice and true good. 
And now that it is puffed and sated with its vices, 
And drunk enough to drink the very dregs 

That foul its gutters to the brim, 

All the dull evils, all the muddy lusts, 

Hang at its girdle, night and day, 

And drain its breasts, like hungering wolves. 

If then these palaces, these sheds, 

If these bright arsenals, if these gloomy temples, fall, 
Crumble to shameful dust, 

The world will shout to see the red sparks fly, 

To meet the future half way, on the wind. 

But that the city itself should have an end, 

Being the soul of future things, 

That these should sink under the waves of flame; 
That the tied bundle of our fates 

She in her hands yet holds, 

Break in the furious feeble hands, 

Break now, and break in face of death; 

That the fair gardens of to-morrow 

Whose gates she opened wide 

Be wasted with the thunderbolt,. 

And cumbered with dead things; 

It is impossible: he is mad who says it. 


43 


THE DAWN ACE AL, BCs: 


Oppidomagne, with all her happy hopes, 

With all her beacons triumphing in the night, 

Shall stand, shall stand erect, 

As long as arty men, whose faith is like my faith, 

Have blood in them to shed, that faith bear fruit in them, 
And that the blind and greedy world at length 

Be fashioned to the will of the new gods! 


CLAIRE 
Oh! the terrors and the sorrows that we shall have to 
endure! 
HERENIEN 


Whatever they may be, I forbid you to complain of them. 
We live in formidable days of terrors, agonies, and new 
births. The unknown becomes the master. Men shake 
with an immense movement of the head the weight 
of all the errors of ages. Utopia resigns its wings, and 
takes root in the earth. Our very besiegers know of it. 


CLAIRE 
Had you any news of the enemy this morning? 


HERENIEN 
Not yet; but what the captain, Hordain, predicted yester- 
day, gave me fire and flame for weeks and weeks. This 
captain belongs to the race of men who realise the 
impossible. Think! he and I, to kill the war dead, 
here, before the discharged and powerless chiefs! To 
bring about the public reconciliation of the foreign sol- 
diers and ours! To exhaust all the forces of one’s 
being, all the energies of one’s faith, for that supreme 

end! What a splendid dream! 


44 


ACT II. SC. I. THE DAWN 


CLAIRE (gently ironical) 
What a delusion! 


HERENIEN 


We should never reject a hope when it spreads such wings. 
What remains improbable to-day, will be accomplished 
fact to-morrow. Hordain relies so far only on dim 
surmisings, a deep but stifled discontent, secret under- 
standings and unions. The troops refuse to fight; they 
are tired out; they disband. Ideas of justice are in the 
air. There is vague talk of concord; the spark is set to 
the grate. I await the breath of wind that shall set 
the wood and straw alight. 

[Hérénien listens to the murmurs in the street. 
There is a knock at the door. The Consul of Op- 
pidomagne enters the room. 


THE CONSUL 


Jacques Hérénien, I come to you in the name of the 
Regency of Oppidomagne, to ask you to accomplish 
a great duty. Far as our ideas are from one another, 
an understanding between us is certain, when it is a 
question of saving the city. I seem to speak to the 
future leader of this people that we love in different 
ways, but both of us ardently. 


HERENIEN 


Preambles are useless. I ask what brings you, and what 
you expect of me. 
[He motions to the Consul to sit down. 


45 


THE DAWN ACT IR SC. 1; 


THE CONSUL 


Up yonder, at the cemetery, the situation of your friends 
is lamentable. They would not resist a serious attack ; 
yesterday the Regency was anxious to bring them to 
order; but they seem to be numerous, young, hardy; 
they are needed for the defence of Oppidomagne. Up 
to now, they were scarcely rebels; they are disaffected, 
on strike: that is all. To-morrow, when they have 
seen the terrible conflagrations that are spreading yon- 
der, perhaps they will in turn become incendiaries. 
Hate counsels folly, and if they slay and pillage, it will 
not indeed be the end of things, but it will be an end 
in shame. 


HERENIEN 


I hold war in execration. This between men of the same 
soil terrifies me more than any other. You, in 
Oppidomagne, have moved heaven and earth to bring 
it about. You have cultivated the misery of the peo- 
ple; you have refused it bread, justice, dignity; you 
have tyrannised it in its body and in its thought; you 
have helped yourselves with its ignorance, as with your 
disloyalty, your cleverness, your lying, your irony, and 
your contempt. You are unworthy and culpable. 


THE CONSUL 
I believed you to have a more balanced, a more unclouded, 
and a loftier judgment. 
HERENIEN 


I think and judge before you, as I would think and judge 
before the enemy. I hate, but pity you. 
406 


ACT II. Sc. I. THE DAWN 


THE CONSUL (rising) 


This is an outrage. 


HERENIEN 


It is a passion and frankness. 


THE CONSUL 


It is above all injustice. 


HERENIEN 


Come now! But shall I ever end if I begin to show you 
the anger of the cities and the dread of the country? 


My memory is faithful: it is armed 

With those remembrances that shall cut deep as sickles. 
It reckons up the murders you and yours have done, 
It knows the soul you bear, and it defies you 

To be but honest, loyal, just, 

Or, without vice, strong in your strength. 

But I forget myself to thus instruct you, 

Knowing that you will turn again 

To weave your spiders’ webs of twisted perfidy. 
Treachery is a sacred thing 

For all of you: it holds you, hunts you, binds you up 
Within a monstrous and most fatal forfeiture. 


THE CoNSUL 


You have then no confidence? 


HERENIEN 


None. 


47 


THE DAWN ACT II, SC. I. 


THE CoNnsuL 


Then, I retire. [The Consul rises to leave. 
HERENIEN 
ait 
[The Consul hesitates, takes two steps, and changes 
his mand. 


THE CONSUL 


Come, it would be folly to let our words get the better of 
our deeds. Oppidomagne alone should occupy us. 


HERENIEN 


I had no other thought when [ received you here. 


THE CONSUL 


A man of affairs and intelligence, such as you are, knows 
better than anyone how we have spread abroad the 
name and influence of Oppidomagne. 


Its history is the history of its Regents 

And of its Consuls, who, ‘neath skies of flaming gold, 
Across red soil that lighted up with blood, 

Unto the end of the world, 

Drew after them its host with their magnetic hand. 
Our troubles, in these times, were many and were fruitful. 
The people and its leaders both 

Were rivals in the battle-field. And those, 

Yonder, who threaten and lay siege to us, 

Know what a crimson and triumphant fluttering, 
Once, our insatiate flags, 

Flung to the winds upon their plains of snow. 


48 


ACT II. Sc. I. THE DAWN 


Oppidomagne is splendid in the eyes of all, 
Oppidomagne is vaster than the memory 

The sea and earth and wind and sun have kept of it; 
Crime, and the noble deeds of war, divide its glory; 
You only see, you only speak, its crimes. 


HERENIEN 


Your glory is all ended, it has stooped to earth; 
With its illustrious sword itself has slain the right; 
To-day another glory comes about, 

Another rises in my breast, 

Perfect and strong and virginal of stain. 


And this glory is made up of the new and profound justice, 


of private heroism, of ardent tenacity, of necessary and 
temporary violence. It is less brilliant than yours, but 
surer. The whole world awaits it. Both of us, you 
with fear and I with fervour, feel it to be inevitable 
and imminent. That is why you come to me; that is 
why I have the temerity to treat you as though you 
were already conquered. Do what you will, you and 
your caste, you are, at this moment, the prisoners of 
my consent or my refusal. 


THE CONSUL 


You mistake. ... 


HERENIEN 


Like me, you know well that you can do nothing 
without my aid. In my hands, I hold all the deep 
moral force of Oppidomagne. 


49 


THE DAWN ACT Ii. SCz 3; 


THE CONSUL 


You forget what the ruin of an empire would mean. All 
the ancient interests, all the customs of ages, sustain 
it. And we have with us the army. 


HERENIEN 


The army? say rather, the chiefs; for the soldiers hesitate 
or protest. They are on the eve of joining the people. 
They are my hope and your fear. If they all obeyed 
you, if you did not fear an immense insurrection, the 
people and the soldiers together, you would have already 
bombarded the Aventine. [A silence. 

Well, you come to ask me, do you not, to go up yonder, 
to the mountain, among the tombs, and enjoin on those 
oppressed people to come down into the midst of those 
who have enslaved them. Oh! I see all the danger and 
the peril of my mission! 


THE CONSUL 
You are mistaken. The Regency begs you to announce that 
the hour has come when perils are so great as to over- 
come all rancour. Whoever believes in Oppidomagne 
should turn hero. Our people has unknown possibili- 
ties of regeneration. 


HERENIEN 


How would they be treated if they came down from up 
yonder? 
THE CONSUL 
The soldiers should return to their proper rank in the army, 
the others should return to their homes and families. 


50 


ACT II. SC. I. THE DAWN 


If poverty, since they have left, has crept in, it shall 
be banished. For the rest, promise what you will: you 
are loyal. We have confidence in you. 


HERENIEN 
Will you sign that for me? 


THE CoNSsUL 


It is done. [Hands him a written paper. 
Read. [Hérénien goes over it and appears satisfied. 
H&RENIEN 


One last word. When I brought after me the farmers of 
the villages, the old men and vagabonds of the cities, 
why were they driven back from the walls, towards 
the enemy? 


THE CoNnsuL 
It was an error. You should have been listened to. 


HERENIEN 
And who allowed me to bury my father among his own folk? 


THE CoNSUL 
I myself. 


HERENIEN 


Go then, and tell the Regency that I will go to the Aventine. 

[Hérénien goes to the window and cries to the people 

still standing in the street: “Let the man who 

comes out of my house pass without a murmur: he 

has done his duty. . . . To-night, at the cemetery, 
yonder!” 


51 


THE DAWN ACT II. SC. 1; 


ScENE II 


At the Aventine (cemetery on a_height). People assembled. 
Haineau occupies the tribune: a tomb higher than the others. 
Stacked arms are planted among the little funereal gardens. 
Crosses, small pillars, pedestals and columns emerge from among 
the flowers. On the wall surrounding it armed workmen are 
on guard. Night is coming on. Fires are lighted. 


HAINEAU 


I conclude then, as I concluded yesterday: in a revolution 
it is essential to strike at ideas in the person of those 
who represent them. It is essential to go slowly, not 
to be carried away, and to make for immediate ends. 
Coldly, each of us will choose his man, his victim. No 
one shall lie down to rest until the three Regents and 
the two Consuls of Oppidomagne are dead. It is the 
work of terror that brings the work of safety. 


Tue Crowp 


—Why proclaim what should be kept quiet? 
—Every man is master of his own knife. 
—Silence! 


HAINEAU 


The enemy burns the churches, the banks, the parliaments. 
The Capitol and the Regency remain. Let us destroy 
them. Let us go down by night, in bands, into Op- 
pidomagne. 


SOMEONE 


Impossible, the Aventine is surrounded. 


52 


‘ACT II, SC. I. THE DAWN 


HAINEAU 
Someone can always be bought over. 


THE Crowp 
—What is the use or these massacres? 
—One chief dies, and another takes his place. 
—We should conquer the whole mass. 


HAINEAU 


You must cut off his head if you would master the beast. 
Once upon a time, in Oppidomagne, when we pro- 
testea among ourselves, who dreamed of half-meas- 
ures? Then we used to admire those who swept away 
things and people. Banks and theatres were blown up, 
and fearless, unflinching, the admirable assassins of 
old ideas died; they seemed to the judges madmen, but 
to the people heroes. That was tie time of ingenuous 
sacrifices, tragical decisions, swift executions. Con- 
tempt of life swept over the universe. Now to-day 
everything is flabby and flaccid: energy is like an un- 
strung bow. We prevaricate, wait, reason, calculate; 
and you fear Oppidomagne conquered, though you 
dared it when it was conquering. 


THE CRowbD 
—We love it now that it is besieged. 
—Our wives and children are there still. 
—Our strike will come to nothing. 
—Let us go back to Oppidomagne. 


HAINEAU 


When you will anything, you must will it in spite of every- 
thing. The hour of the last anguish has come. 


53 


THE DAWN ACT II. Sc. II. 


What matter the sorrows and the sobs of our mothers 
if, thanks to our sufferings, new life is gained! 


SOMEONE (pointing to Haineau) 
He has no children! 
HAINEAU 
If I had, I would sacrifice them for the future. 


SOMEONE 
These are only words: you draw back when the time comes 
for action. 
HAINEAU 
I have approved myself during the time of the revolt. 


SOMEONE 
You hid yourself when they were killing the people. 


HAINEAU 
If I had the thousand arms of a crowd, I would act alone, 
and I would disdain you... . 
[Hooting and jostling: Haineau is dislodged from the 
tribune 


A GROUP IN THE CROWD 


—There goes another who won't make fools of us any 
more. 
—He is too base and cowardly. 


ANOTHER GROUP 
—We loathe him, now that we know ourselves better. 
—We don’t know what we want, now that we want it all 
tegether. 
54 


ACT II. SC. II. THE DAWN 


—If we don’t do something we are lost. 
—Let us go back to Oppidomagne. 
[The tumult quets down. Le Breux mounts the 
tribune. 
Le Breux 


Haineau let himself be carried away for nothing. He ac- 
cused us of lacking daring. Is not our very presence 
on this mountain sufficient proof of heroism? At any 
moment we may be attacked and cut to pieces. 


HAINEAU 
Take care; you will frighten them. 


Le Breux 
[Shrugging his shoulders, glancing at Haineau, and 
continuing: 

We must not use up, on ourselves and among ourselves, the 
hate that should strike only Oppidomagne. We have 
now been here together for a week, and already di- 
visions, jealousies, spite, the hesitation of one, the folly 
of another, get the better of our mutual understanding, 
cemented though it was by God knows what promises! 
Happily, I have good news for you. The Regency 
authorises Hérénien to treat with us, here on the Aven- 
tine. [Showing a written paper. 
His letter brings me the announcement. 


THE Crowp (on all sides) 
—Hérénien will see clear. It is he who overcomes all our 
troubles. 
—He knows what to do. 
—He will give us back to ourselves. 


55 


THE DAWN ACT II. SC. II. 


AN OPPONENT 


Must he always be called on? 


ANOTHER 


We abandon ourselves to him like women. 


Le Breux 


You tempt the people by speaking like that. 


AN OPPpoNENT 


We open its eyes; we put it on its guard against itself. 


Le Breux 


The crowd adores Hérénien. It does not discuss its en- 
thusiasms. 


AN OPPONENT 
Hérénien is not a God. Why did he leave Oppidomagne 
on the night of the revolt? 
Le Breux 


His father was dying. 


AN OPppoNENT 


His leaving was a mask for his flight. Hérénien pays,you 
to defend him. 


Le Breux 


If I was in his pay, you would have been in mine long ago. 
You have a little low soul which cannot understand 

a higher one than your own. 
| Acclamations. 


56 


‘ACT II. SC. II. THE DAWN 


SOMEONE 


Let us wait for Hérénien. 


A Younc MAN 
I will follow him, but I will kill him if he betrays us. 


Le Breux 


I answer for him, as you answer for yourself to yourself. 
We need Herénien. We are sure of him. Look 
yonder. (There 1s a movement near the gate of the 
cemetery.) Heis coming. It is only he who is strong 
enough to unite us and save us. 

[The crowd masses itself on the boundary wall. 
Long cheering. Hérénien mounts rapidly on a 
tomb, and speaks, keeping his eye on Haineau, who 
is in front of him. 


HERENIEN 


At last I am with you! You and I are only half alive, 
when we live apart. At the village where my father 
died I heard of your exodus to this mountain. I 
thought of Roman times, of the pride, the decisiveness, 
the courage, the beauty, of the supreme peoples. Let 
what may come of it, this dazzling and brutal act will 
have greatened you. You have proved your combined 
stubbornness and your single valour. Those that re- 
fuse to you, soldiers, your proper pay, to you, citizens, 
complete justice, because you were the claimants for 
it, are to-day checkmated. The means you have used 
were excellent. But will they remain so? 

An armed conflict with Oppidomagne would be a disaster. 


37 


THE DAWN ACT Th. SC.11, 


Up to now it has been postponed. Up to now, you 
have remained bound together in an admirable bond 
of defence. I affirm, before you all, that you have 
been proud to live together, thanks to your clear and 
mutual good-will. You have realized that the future 
depended upon your attitude. That is well. 
[Silence. All heads are bowed. 
But will this union maintain itself, in the midst of the 
misery and the famine that will break out here? 
[General silence. Haineau shrugs his shoulders. 
Férénien gathers that there has been a dispute. 
Suddenly changing his tone: 
You were, I admit, in terrible straits. From the height 
of this mountain of death, certainly, you dominated 
those whom you detested. But your hearths and 
homes were wanting; your wives were wanting, your 
sons, your daughters. The Regency held them in its 
grasp, already impatient to crush them out. Ah! you 
have suffered the interminable passing of black hours, 
the long and slow procession of anguish after anguish 
through the soul! Happily all may be changed. The 
Regency offers you peace. 


HAINEAU 


Never will we parley with the Regents. 


HERENIEN 
If you refuse to parley, the massacre begins. What! we 
are a handful of enthusiasts here, whose action will 
decide the lot of a people; we are on the eve of an 
enormous victory for the people, and we consent to 
die like a rat in a trap. [ Cheers. 


58 


‘ACT II. SC. II. THE DAWN 


HAINEAU 


Everything that comes from the Regency must be rejected 
without consideration. 


HERENIEN 


Everything that it offers must be considered, and used for 
cur own advantage. What matter the danger of the 
means! I ama man who would use the thunder itself! 

| Cheers. 


HAINEAU 
We shall be your dupes. 


HERENIEN 


What do you know of my designs, of my hopes, of my life? 
You disorganise: I organise. Those who listen to you 
waste themselves in defiances, in plots, in terrorisings. 
For a week now you have been using your utmost 
rigour: you have achieved a nullity, mere disputes. I 
come and I find your work paltry. I am ashamed of it. 


[ Cheers. 
HAINEAU 
I will have no tyrant. [ Hooting. 
H&ERENIEN 
You would become one, if I let you. [ Cheers. 
HAINEAU 
You overturn the Regency only to usurp its place. 
HERENIEN 
Its place! I might have taken it: I disdained it. 
[ Cheers. 


59 


THE DAWN ACT II. SC. Il. 


HAINEAU 


You consent to the most dubious compromises, you 
trafic... 


HERENIEN 
Silence! Notaword.more! This debate shall not descend 
to personal questions. 
[Addressing himself directly to the crowd: 
I hate the authorities to such a degree that I do not so 
much as dictate to you the conditions of peace. You 
yourselves shall impose them upon the Regency. 
Speak. [ Cheers. 
SOMEONE 


We want to be treated as men. We have used our rights 
in striking for them. 


HERENIEN 
Perfect. 
ANOTHER 
We want our goods to be restored to us. 
HERENIEN 
Promised. 
ANOTHER 
We want the arrears of wages to be paid to workmen. 


HERENIEN 
The Regency agrees to it. 


ANOTHER 
We want to re-enter the town under arms. 


60 


‘ACT II. SC. II. THE DAWN 


HERENIEN 


You may. And I add: if confiscations have taken place 
during your absence, they shall be annulled. All con- 
demnations shall be forgotten. You yourselves shall be 
the judges of those who have judged you. 

[ Cheers. 

And now that we are in agreement, tell me: would it not 
have been monstrous that men of the same soil should 
have cut one another’s throats? Think: yonder, in the 
feverous streets of the old quarters, in the atmosphere 
of powder and conflagration, disabled folk have taken 
refuge, in an immense hope of some renewal. More 
and more it is our programmes that they discuss, our 
discourses that they comment on, our soul that they 
drink in, The army itself is in a ferment with our 
dreams. Every discontent, every grudge, every in- 
justice, every oppression, every enslavement, takes an 
unknown voice to make itself heard! Our masters 
hate each other. They have no more strength. They 
obey a phantom. 

[Acquiescence from all sides. 

Among the enemy, the same confusion, the same weakness. 
Mutinies break out among the soldiers. There are re- 
volts against the cruelty of chiefs, against the horrors 
and follies of the campaign. Storms of hatred arise. 
Sick of nameless dreads, distresses, and miseries, all 
along after the necessary union of man with man. 
They are ashamed to be butchers of their fellows. 
And now, if this conflagration of instincts could be ex- 
tinguished ; if our besiegers could be made to feel that 
they would find brotherly souls among us; 1f by a sud- 


61 


THE DAWN ACT Il. 8c. I. 


den understanding we might realise to-day a little of 
the great human dream, Oppidomagne would be for- 
given for all its shame, its folly, its blasphemy ; it would 
become the place in the world where one of the few 
sacred events had happened. It is with this thought 
that you must all follow me down, towards your chil- 
dren. [ Cheers. 


Tue Crowpb 


—He is the only one who makes things move. 
—Without him, our cause was lost. 


SOMEONE (speaking directly to Hérénien) 


We will all obey you; you, you are our master. 


[Cheers. They hoist Hérénien on their shoulders, and 
carry him towards the city. Le Breux escorts him. 
All descend. Cries of triumph are heard. 


ACE MT 


ScENE I 


A fortnight after. 
Abode of Hérénien, the same as in the second act. The work- 


table, covered with papers, is near the window, in which panes 
are broken. In the streets, the crowd comes and goes, retires 
to a distance and returns; groups cry: ‘“ Down with the trai- 
tor!” "Death ito: ‘the “traitor!” “Death ‘to: him? “sown 
with him!” 


CLAIRE 


And now this has lasted for a fortnight! The house seems 


like a ship in distress. Billows of rage and shouting 


62 


ACT it ‘SC, I, THE DAWN 


beat upon it. Oh! that accursed affair on the Aven- 
tine! To have fallen all of a sudden from the height 
of enthusiasm, into disgrace and hate! 

[| Haineau enters rapidly. 


CLAIRE 
You! here! 

HAINEAU 
Yes, I, 

CLAIRE 
What do you want? 

HAINEAU 


You don’t know then of my speech in the “ Old Market ”? 
I expected a better welcome. 
CLAIRE (pointing to Hérénien’s room) 


What, you! his adversary and his enemy! 
[Pointing to the street. 
You who stir up those cries and uproars! 


HAINEAU 
By this time, after what he must know, Hérénien will re- 


ceive me better than you, my friend and my sister. 


CLAIRE 
I do not understand. 


HAINEAU 


You will understand soon. Meanwhile, tell me, what was 
he like during these days of vain and miserable rage? 


63 


THE DAWN ACT III. sc. I. 


CLAIRE 


Oh, do not think he is overcome! He is still splendidly 
erect; he is carrying out the boldest of projects: he 
will reconcile Oppidomagne with the enemy. 


HAINEAU (pointing to the street) 


But these uproars at his door? 


CLAIRE 


At first, it was hard. It was useless for me to espouse 
his furies, envelop him with my fervour, wait upon him 
better than ever: he called up all his old grudges, he 
stirred himself up to anger, he rushed to the window, 
shook his fist at the city, shouted with rage, and the 
tears started from his eyes. In all his violence he was 
the terrible child that you know, 


HAINEAU 


Ah! if he had only listened to me, we should never have 
fallen out. The Regency would not have deceived him. 
The people would love him still. But he is not to be 
disciplined: he has never known what it is to will pa- 
tiently. He goes by bounds and tempests, like the 
wind of his country. 


CLAIRE 


And what ought he to have done? 


HAINEAU 


Prolonged the revolt on the Aventine; extended it instead 
of reducing it, accepted the civic conflict, made the 
64 


ACT III. Sc. I. THE DAWN 


misery sharper; seized the banks by force; the public 
services by force; destiny, by force. 


CLAIRE 


It was impossible. 


HAINEAU 


Everything was possible, in the state of fever in which we 
were. But there had to be a plan, a resolution coldly 
taken and followed. First, we should have organised 
the resistance: we. were on strike, up yonder; then the 
attack; then the massacre. It was the immediate, 
definite, urgent things that needed seeing to. Those in 
authority would have been assassinated: Regent and 
Consuls. They were beginning to listen to me. 
Hérénien came to the Aventine at an unlucky moment: 
circumstances were in his favour. He is the senti- 
mental tribune in speaking, big gestures, big words: he 
magnetises, he does not convince. Ah! when I think 
of it, all my hatred comes back to me. 


CLAIRE 


How you deceive yourself! 
[Clamours in the street. Haineau and Claire pay no 
heed to them. 


HAINEAU 
He seems not to know what he wants himself. He always 
looks beyond the hour. I never understand him. 
CLAIRE 


I always understand him. 


65 


THE DAWN ACT. 111. 8C,. 1. 


HAINEAU 


It is a mistake to put all his will into the service of certain 
dreams. He who blows down the tube too hard breaks 
the glass. 


CLAIRE 
Don’t let us discuss things. You are violent, and you feel 


that you are weak and ill at ease. If you are here, in 
his house, it is to ask for something. What is it? 


HAINEAU (with pride) 
I have come here to tell you that yesterday, I, I who am now 
speaking, overcame the crowd, defended Hérénien, 


made them cheer him. My tenacity has conquered his 
ill-luck. 


CLAIRE 


You have done that, you? But how then does your con- 
duct go with your ideas? 


HAINEAU 
Ah, it is like this! When I act for myself, I am a failure, 
I am betrayed, I am hated, Le Breux supplants me; in 
short, Hérénien, in spite of all, is the only man who 
can save things, at the point they have reached. He 
has ravelled them, let him unravel them. 


CLAIRE 
And you, you have sustained him? 


HAINEAU 


Certainly, because we cannot have the revolt over again, 
because everything crumbles through my fingers, be- 


66 


ACT III. SC. I. THE DAWN 


cause I have no chance, no luck. If I could only tell 
you how childish the people are, and how they are 
already regretting that they have no master! Oh, it is 
all over, it is all over! and one ought to have the 
strength to disappear. 


CLAIRE 


It is in despair then that you sustain my man? 


HAINEAU 


What does it matter? 
[taking his hat and stick and preparing to go. 
Good-bye, you know now what you ought to know. When 
Hérénien comes down, prepare him to see me. 
[He goes out. Renewed tempest of howls and cries. 
Hérénien enters. 


CLAIRE (pointing towards the crowd) 


People must be wicked when the best of them become sav- 
age so soon. 


HERENIEN 


Come, have patience. I am as tenacious as the peasant my 
father. Yesterday, these cries pursued me through the 
whole house, they beat against the walls from top to 
bottom, from cellar to attic, everywhere, like alarm- 
bells. I felt a rage creeping over me, I would like 
to have strangled them, stamped them to bits, anni- 
hilated them. I was in a fever of hate. I answered 
their nameless rages with insults. To-day, I feel quite 
firm. (Unfolding a letter.) Listen, this is what has 
been sent tome: “I can now give you a definite assur- 


67 


THE DAWN ACT III, SC. I. 


ance. All the officers are now won over to our cause 
and will follow us: some out of spite, others out of 
envy, all out of disgust. We came to an understand- 
ing yesterday in a secret meeting. I hold them in my 
hand. They will obey me like the pen with which I 
write to you, like the man who carries you this letter. 
Through them the whole army is ours. The generals? 
They are too far off, too high; the soldiers are hardly 
aware of them: they may be overlooked.” (Folding 
the letter.) And this letter comes to me from Hordain, 

the captain of the enemy. 
[Fresh outbreak of cries: “ Death to him!” “ Down 

with him!” 
CLAIRE 
My friend! 
HERENIEN 

Well, let them cry on! As for that, I foresaw that the 
Regency, when it promised everything, when it gave 
up everything, kept the half up its sleeves, like the 
jugglers in fairs. It was the maddest thing to go to 
the Aventine! But I had to have the people, I had to 
have my people and its fervour, before I could make 

terms with the besiegers. 


CLAIRE 
How reasonable you are now! 


HERENIEN 
The Regency fooled me perfectly! Those vacuous and 
bedizened folk, measuring my ambition by their own, 


came here, to offer me a block of its ruined power: as 
68 


ACT III. Sc. I. THE DAWN 


if men like me did not conquer their own place, for 
themselves, in the sight of all. They went out of that 
door like beaten lackeys, and since then my loss has 
enfuriated them. They have only a few days more 
to live, and there is nothing but their rage for my 
downfall to keep their thoughts from their own death- 
agony. Ah! if the people knew! All the appearances 
are against me. I believed in a poor scrap of writing, 
a mere signature, scratched out with the same pen that 
set it down. The more the Regency has broken its 
promises, the more I seem to have broken mine. Really, 
they might believe me a guilty accomplice. 


CLAIRE 

It is the people that is. You have only been able to deceive 
them because you were deceived yourself. The inno- 
cence of all you have done blinds them. Ah! I have 
my own idea. The masses are as suspicious, as ma- 
lignant, as ungrateful, as stupid, as those who govern 
them. They will never admit that anyone can be simply 
pure and great. 

HERENIEN 
I forbid you to think that. 


CLAIRE 
You said it yourself yesterday. 


HERENIEN 
Oh! I, that is different. [Pause.] The people loves me, 
and I love it, despite all, through all. What is hap- 
pening now is only a lover’s quarrel. 
[Insulting shouts in the street. 


69 


THE DAWN ACT: IIT. ‘SC. 1; 


CLAIRE 


They are there by their thousands insulting us. And those 


are the same mouths that cheered you! Ah! the 
cowards! the wretches! the madmen! 


[Renewed tempest of cries. 


HERENIEN 


Indeed, one might think they had never known me. 


[Going towards the window with clenched fists: 


Oh! those brutes! those brutes! those brutes! 


[Then, returning to his desk: 


And yet yesterday, at the meeting in the Old Market, they 


all cheered me. Haineau defended me with such fer- 
vour that I forgive him all. Le Breux came to me 
to-night with the most reassuring news. The duplicity 


of the Regents is becoming clearer and clearer. All 
Oppidomagne returns to its true master. My hour 
has come again. Has it not? (impatiently) Has it 


not, then? 


CLAIRE 


There is good hope of it. 


HERENIEN 


No, no, but there is certainty! 

Despite these heady cries, despite their multitude, 
I can divine already such a flock of hands 

All bending to my strength, to me, to-morrow! 
My past returns again, and fills their minds, 

In a great flood of memories 


And in a foam of glory. [As if speaking to himself: 


7O 


ACT III, Sc. I. THE DAWN 


I hold the future fast, in these two hands of mine: 
Those who withstand, 

And those who put their trust in me, 

Deep in their conscience know it, all of them. 

That noble dream which is made flesh in me, 

Now more than ever, spurs me on to live; 

These are the times and these the hours that fire my soul. 
What are these cries to me, these clamours on the wind, 
And these unterrifying storms? 

Only the future, in my mind, 

Far stronger and more real than the present, lives! 


CLAIRE (pointing to the street) 


If they could only see you, how they would be won by 
your confidence! 


My friend, you make of me 

The proudest woman on earth, 

And I abase myself and lose myself in your great soul; 
Take, take this kiss I give to you, 

Take it, and bear it where you go, 

As a clear shining weapon bear it! 

There are few men upon the earth 

That ever took 

A deeper and a truer one than this! 


HERENIEN 


If my own self were to forsake me, I should find myself 
again in you, my force has passed so into your heart! 
But I am so unshaken in my destiny that nothing 
which is happening now seems to me real. I believe 
in surprise, chance, the unknown. (Pointing to the 


i 


THE DAWN ACT III. SC. 1. 


street.) Let them howl on! they are preparing their 
repentance. 
[The tumult grows greater. Blows are heard on 
the door below. Window-panes are smashed. 


HERENIEN 


If they go on knocking, I will open. 


CLAIRE 
It would be mad. 


HERENIEN 
There have been moments when my mere presence meant 
victory! Never have I repelled them, when they ap- 
proached my threshold. 

[Hérénien thrusts aside Claire, who tries to stop him, 
rushes to the window, opens it, and plants himself 
there with his arms folded. The uproar becomes 
quieter, then stops, and there is silence. Suddenly, 
at a distance, other cries are heard: “ Down with 
the Regency! Down with the firebrands! Long 
live Hérénien!” 


HERENIEN 


At last! There is the true people! The people that 
cheered me at the Old Market! My heart never de- 
ceived me. It heard when my ears were still deaf. 

[There is a swaying and jostling in the crowd, con- 
tradictory outcries, then, slowly, quietude. 


CLAIRE (at the window) 


Le Breux is going to speak. Listen. 


72 


ACT Til. ‘SC. I. THE DAWN 


HERENIEN (impatiently) 


I want to speak myself. 


Le Breux (im the street) 


Hérénien was sincere and just. (Murmurs.) There are 
five hundred of you howling at him, and there is not 
one of you whom he has not helped. (Murmurs.) 
As for me, he extricated me from the very talons of 
the consular judges. Last year, he battled to deliver 
Haineau. And you, all of you? he saved you in the 
time of the tragic and famishing strikes, he... . 


HERENIEN (impatiently) 

I have no need of a defender. 

[Addressing Le Breux, who speaks in the street. 
I must take the people: I must not have them given 

to me. 
THE CrowD 

—Let him speak. 
—Down with him! death to him! He is a traitor! 
—Let him speak! 
—Death to him! Down with him! He is bought! 
—Silence! [ Quiet is restored. 


HAINEAU (in the street) 


I, Charles Haineau, suspected Jacques Hérénien. He 
seemed to me a man to be doubted. Like you, I op- 
posed him. To-day, I regret it. 


THE Crowp (contradictorily) 
Long live Hérénien! Death to him! Down with him! 


73 


THE DAWN ACT JIESC, LE 
HAINEAU 


The Regency sent emissaries amongst us: I surprised them 
yesterday at the meeting in the Old Market: they were 
urging other wretches to kill Jacques Hérénien, to pil- 
lage his house, to pretend that it was the vengeance 
of the people. 


THE Crowp 


—Death to the Regents! 
—Long live the people of Oppidomagne! 
—Long live Hérénien! 


HAINEAU 
We need Hérénien. 


TuE Crowp 


—Why did he receive dubious messages ? 
—Why did he leave our meetings? 

—He is a despot. 

—He is a martyr. 

—Let him defend himself. 

—Silence! 

—May he forgive us! 


HERENIEN 


Forgive you, yes: for a man.such as I am is not doubted; 
for the Regency of Oppidomagne deceives as easily 
as I take breath. Bit by bit, the fine front of its 
authority is chipped away; rag by rag the fine cloak 
of its power falls from its shoulders. It called on 
me to sew together the pieces. It dispatched me 
to the Aventine, with the design of monopolising or 


74 


ACT III. SC. I. THE DAWN 


ruining me. The mission was difficult, dangerous, 
tempting. I acquitted myself of it as of a duty, and 
to-day I am neither lost to you nor gained by it; I am, 
and I remain, free; as always, I set my strength to 
serve my supreme idea. (Some cheers.) Just now 
I heard cries of “ Bought! Bought!” 

[Turning and seizing a bundle of papers on his desk. 
“ Bought!” What have they not done that I should 
not be! (brandishing a roll of papers). In this hand- 
ful of letters they have promised me everything that 
infamy can abandon to an apostate, corruption to a 
traitor. That you may touch and handle the synicism, 
the policy, the perfidy, the baseness, the blindness of 
the Regency, I hand over to you their letters. They 
were all accompanied by pressing demands, they were 
all the prologue of more ardent solicitations, all of them 
contain no more than the shadow of the infamies that 
came out in personal interviews. What they dared 
not write, they said; what they dared not endorse, they 
impressed ; what they dared not formulate, they hinted. 
They returned to the attack, after each failure; they 
answered refusals by bigger offers. Finally, they gave 
up all pride. I needed but to have opened my hand, 
to seize the whole power, and personify, in my own 
person, all the past. Ah! truly I wonder at myself 
when I think with what violence this fist remained 
clenched. 

And now for the letters, read them yourselves. (He throws 
them to the crowd.) Talk them over, share them 
amongst you, spread them to the four winds of Op- 
pidomagne. The immense ruin of the Regency is in 


75 


THE DAWN ACT III. Sc. I. 


them. You will understand all. As for me, I rest all 
my security on the insane imprudence of disarming 
myself; I am lost, for ever, willingly, joyously, in the 
eyes of the Consuls; I offer them the most unforgetta- 
ble of insults and I take refuge in your justice. Hence- 
forth, it is you who protect my life. 
[Cries of enthusiasm, 
I may be attacked, on any side. Am I not the shining 
target, at which all the arrows are aimed? 
Swear to me then,— no matter what the calumny that 
may be reported, no matter what the fable, foolish 
or looking like truth, that may be invented — swear to 
follow me, with eyes shut, but with assured heart. 
(They swear, and cheer.) It should be our joy and our 
pride to belong to one another, to hate, to love, and to 
think as one. [ Cheers. 
I will be your soul, and you my arms. And together 
we shall realise such splendid conquests of humanity, 
that seeing them, thanks to us, living and shining in 
their very eyes, men shall date time from the day of 
our victory. 
[Cheers; then calm; Hérénien adds: 
And now, I request Vincent Le Breux and Charles 
Haineau to join me here. I wish no faintest differ- 
ence to exist between us. 
[Renewed cheers. Hérénien turns and goes up to 
Claire, who embraces him. 
You see now that we should never despair of the peo- 
ple. (After a silence.) Tell our emissary from Hor- 
dain to come here immediately. 
[Haineau and Le Breux enter. Claire goes out. 


76 


‘ACT III. SC. I. THE DAWN 


Le Breux 
This is victory! 
HAINEAU 
Oh! you are really a master. When I fight against you I 


am without force; I am worth a thousand, when I am 
by your side. 


HERENIEN 


Well, this time at least, our good old Regency seems finally 
stuck in its own mud. (Sitting down.) Despite all 
its promises and oaths, no help was given to the house- 
hold of any of the revolters. It assigned our men to 
the most dangerous posts: manipulation of the powder 
and explosives. The enemy’s bombs fell into their 
midst as they worked. Lists of suspected persons were 
drawn up: each of the military leaders had his own. 


Le Breux 


You must regret your action at the Aventine. 


HERENIEN 


Come now! (Turning sharply to Haineau.) Do you 
know, Charles Haineau, what I planned out while you 
were urging these storms of revolt against me? 

HAINEAU 


Master, believe that all that, my part in it... 


HERENIEN 


Do not excuse yourself, do not interrupt; have I not for- 
gotten everything? Yes, over the heads and the thou- 
ae 


THE DAWN ACT III. SC. I. 


sand arms of this now conquered outbreak, I realised the 
boldest dream of my life, the one for which alone I 
exist. (Rising suddenly.) In.less than three days the 
enemy will enter Oppidomagne peacefully and we shall 
welcome them. 


HAINEAU 
It is impossible. 
HERENIEN 


The Regent’s men have never ceased tempting me. I have 
discussed patiently with them, questioning, illusioning 
them, asking for guarantees and confidences; giving 
them hope and taking it from them in turn, worming 
out all their secrets; opposing, to their senile tactics, 
my abruptness and my anger. I played with them 
audaciously, madly; and I know now, better than any- 
one, better especially than they themselves, how in- 
evitable and how close is their ruin. Their treasury? 
Empty. Their munition? Exhausted. Their  gar- 
ners? Ransacked. No more bread for the siege; no 
more money for the defence. They are asking in what 
waste, what orgies, fortunes and public supplies have 
disappeared. Everyone accuses everybody. 

The army? The day before yesterday five battalions re- 
fused to march. The ring-leaders were condemned 
to death. They were led to the place of execution: 
not a soldier would fire upon them: they are alive yet. 

[Cheers in the street: “ Long live Hérénien!” 

At the council, the Consuls squabble. Does one pro- 

pose a plan? his neighbour opposes it, details his own, 

and wants that to be adopted. A week since, the min- 
78 


ACT III. Sc. I. THE DAWN 


isters decided on a general sortie by the Gate of Rome; 
they succeeded in getting it voted: not a Consul would 
put himself at the head of the troops. 

Each Regent has sent me his emissary: these old men are 
not even agreed between themselves. They are like 
poor caged screech-owls, whose perches are turned 
round. They lose their heads, cry out, and close their 
eyes against the fire of day. They cast at one another 
the stupidities, faults, and crimes, for which they are 
afraid to take the responsibility. ‘“ What is to be 
done?” becomes the motto of their reign. 


CLAIRE (entering) 


The emissary has come. 


HERENIEN 


Let him come in. (Turning towards Haineau and Le 
Breux.) Ihave shown you the situation as it is among 
us in the city; you shall judge of what it is like among 
the enemy. Then you will see that war is no longer 
possible. 

[Presenting the emissary to Le Breux and Haineau. 
Here is one I am sure of. He knows, more than any 
of us, as to the state of mind of both armies. (To the 
emissary.) Tell them what you have discovered. 

[Hérénien walks to and fro in the room. 


THE EMISSARY 


Last Tuesday night my brother was sent to reconnoitre at 
the outposts. He went on a long way, to find out if 
the intrenchment that we had bombarded had given 


re 


THE DAWN ACT III. SC. I. 


way, and would give us the chance of a general sortie 
from the Gate of Rome. 


HERENIEN (interrupting) 


That is the sortie I told you of. 


THE Emissary (continuing) 


All at once, in the dark, a voice calls out, but gently, as 
if afraid of frightening him and driving him away. 
A few quick, friendly words are exchanged. He is 
asked if there are not really in Oppidomagne responsi- 
ble men who have had enough of the war. 


HERENIEN (quickly) 


That happened two days ago, and since then there have 
been many similar colloquies. 


THE EMISSARY 
My brother answers that Oppidomagne will defend itself, 
that the revolt against this mutual slaughter must come, 
not from the conquered, but from the conquerors. And 
other soldiers come up, and say the besiegers are tired 
out, that deserters are endless, that rebellions are break- 
ing out every day, that there is no longer an army, that 
they will have to raise the siege, if the frightful epi- 
demic which decimates the troops continues. They 
want the union of all the miseries against all the powers. 


HERENIEN 
Well, who then, after such an affirmation of human soli- 
darity, would dare affirm that the conscience of men 
remains unchanged? 


80 


ACT III. sc. I. THE DAWN 


O these first trembling confidences that come 
By night, between the perilous dark 

And the terrors of war and its despair ; 

These first confessions of the true soul of man, 
Lucid at last and triumphing, 

The passionless stars 

On high must rejoice to hear them! 


HAINEAU 


Truly, I admire you! At the tiniest glimmer that reaches 
you through the crack of a door, you are certain of the 
immense presence of the sun. Since Oppidomagne was 
blockaded, has a day passed, a single day, without 
traps being laid for you? Who guarantees you the 
sincerity of the soldiers? Who tells you that Oppido- 
magne will open its walls, even to unarmed enemies? 
You believe everything, like a blind man. The force 
that animates you is as insensate as it is ardent! 


HERENIEN 


It is the only true one: be in the service of circumstances, 
hold oneself at the mercy of the immense hope that 
thrills through the whole world to-day! 


HAINEAU 


You believe then that the enemy will abdicate its victory, 
and accept peace without profit? 


HERENIEN 


You reason without knowledge. The vagabonds and the 
peasants, who at the beginning of the siege were driven 
81 


THE DAWN ACT III. SC. I. 


back into the country, and who live, God knows how, 
between the besiegers and us, have given me tidings 
day by day. Hordain confirms what they have said, 
and I have checked everything. The bombardment 
was bound to cease. The epidemic devours the camp: 
twenty thousand men are dead; the moats of the en- 
trenchment overflow with corpses. A general was 
killed yesterday by a soldier, who had suddenly gone 
mad. The lower ranks league together to destroy the 
works of the siege: they spike the cannon, they throw 
balls and powder into the river. It is thus universal 
misery, distress, sorrows, tears, rages, terrors, that 
bring about these hopes of fellowship, these deep and 
fraternal cries. The very force of things is in accord 
with ours. 


Le Breux 


You are wonderful! You were thought to be overcome, 
and now you are preparing for a more gigantic enter- 
prise than ever. 


HERENIEN 


It is because I have faith, a faith capable of communicating 
itself to the whole world. I see myself, I feel myself, I 
multiply myself, in others; I assimilate them to me. 
The army of Oppidomagne is in my hands: that of the 
enemy obeys Hordain, my disciple and my fanatic. 
We have both worked with enthusiasm. Of what use 
is ancient wisdom, prudent, systematic, buried in 
books? It forms part of the humanity of yesterday; 
mine dates from to-day. (To the enussary.) 

Go and tell those who will be at the outposts this evening 

82 


ACT III. SC. I. THE DAWN 


that I shall be with them. You will give notice to 
Hordain. 


[Cheers in the street. The soldier goes out. 


HERENIEN (to Haineau and Le Breux) 


Will you come with me? Come, tell me quickly. 


Le Breux 
Assuredly. 
HERENIEN (to Haineau) 
And you? 
HAINEAU 
As long as the leaders live, they may do harm. As long 
as they have arms, they will kill. They will be the 


reaction which will follow your victory. Suppress 
them first. 


HERENIEN 
They will be the past, powerless and annihilated. Come, 
will you go with me? 
HAINEAU 
No. 
HERENIEN 


Good, we will do great things without you. 
[Renewed cheering in the street. Hérémen leans out 
of the window, and is cheered. 


Le Breux (to Haineau) 


He always astonishes me. He sees the obstacle, as you 
and I do. On what prodigies does he rely to over- 
83 


THE DAWN acti. sc. 0. 


come it? And how he carries one along in the whirl- 
wind of his tempest! 


HAINEAU 


That man has on his side the unknown forces of life. 
(After a pause.) I shall go with him, after all. 


ScENE II 


RUINED house. Night, at the outposts. On one side, rising ground 
and entrenchments; on the other, the distant walls of Oppi- 
domagne, faintly lit up. Le Breux is sitting on a heap of stones; 
before him an officer of the enemy, and some soldiers. Silent 
groups arrive. 


Le Breux 


In Oppidomagne, regents, judges, leading men, all are at 
the mercy of the people. They are unconscious of the 
imminence of their defeat, and imagine that they still 
govern. But what Hérénien wishes will come to pass. 


THE OFFICER 


Among us, no one dares punish any more. All the links 
that bound us to our leaders and to our kings have 
been snapped. We, the inferiors and the poor, are 
the masters. To think that after twenty months of 
campaigning, after taking six provinces, and ten strong- 
holds, we should collapse before your disorganised 
capital ! 

Le Breux 


Will Hordain come? 


84 


ACT III. SC. II. THE DAWN 


THE OFFICER 
I expect him. 
Le Breux 
I am curious to see him. I do not know him. 


THE OFFICER 


He is fifty, he is a mere captain. It was during the dull 
and stormy winters of our country of ice, in the grey 
and snowy boredom of a little garrison town, that he 
won me over to his will and to his faith. He would 
sit down, at night, at my chimney corner, under my 
lamp; and we would argue. The works of Hérénien 
had enlightened him; they were my light. Hordain 
explained them to me, commented on them, with a 
conviction so profound, that nothing seemed to me 
more self-evident in human thought and justice. Ah! 
those friendly and ardent evenings together! You 
will never know, you people of Oppidomagne, what 
miracles can be wrought by a book on the grave, un- 
satisfied and profound souls of a country of shadow 
and solitude! 

[Hordain and Hérénien arrive almost at the same 
moment, from opposite directions ; they are accom- 
panied by officers and soldiers. 


HorpAIN 


I come to you, proud to know you. There is not an idea 
which we do not share. 


HERENIEN 


I knew by your letters that I could put all my trust in you. 
Both of us have our lives at stake, both of us love one 


85 


THE DAWN — ACTIIUIL. Sc. I. 


another for the sake of the same profound and mag- 
nificent idea ; 


And what then if they call us traitors? 

Never have we beheld our souls 

More proud, more firm, more masters 

Of all the future. We stand here, 

Hardy and clear, and face to face; 

Do we not bring two nations peace? 

Do we not work at good with our rebellious hands? 
And conscience cries to us: Well done! 


HorDAIN 


Truly, my soul is more peaceful than on a battle-eve! All 
the words that justify this understanding between us 
have been said centuries ago. 


HERENIEN 


If it were miracles we wanted, they would rise on every 
hand. The air we breathe, the horizons we behold, 
the fever that beats in our foreheads, the great burning 
of which each of us is but a flame, foretell the new 
justice. 


HorbDAIN 


My propaganda was incessant. First, absolutely secret. 
Then, the general watchfulness was relaxed to such a 
point that my prudence became a mere luxury. Since 
the Marshal Hardenz, the only real leader we had, fell 
into disgrace, our army exists no longer. Without un- 
derstanding anything definite, our soldiers gather what 
is in the air. An order! and they would all go towards 

86 


act 111. sc.u. THE DAWN 


Oppidomagne, happy, confiding, and fraternal. A 
number of the dead generals were replaced by cap- 
tains, of whom some are ours. It is only the very old 
leaders who seem to me impossible to win over. They 
would be a danger, if we did not act without delay, 
sharply, to-morrow. 


HAINEAU 
How to-morrow? But time to prepare... 


HERENIEN 
We must act like a thunder-clap. 


HAINEAU 
But still, it is urgent that Oppidomagne should know what 
we want. 
HERENIEN 
She guesses it. To-morrow, she shall know it. 


HAINEAU 


But it is impossible to move thousands of men, to throw 
open the gates of a city, without taking measures and 
assuring ourselves of every chance of success. 


HERENIEN 
All the measures are taken; all the chances are in my hand. 
You alone hesitate and tremble; you have no faith, 
you are afraid to believe. 


HorDAIN 


This then is what I propose: to-morrow, as soon as it be- 
comes dark, at seven o’clock, those who are here and all 


87 


THE DAWN — actIit. sc. 1. 


our friends give orders to their men to march peace- 
fully towards Oppidomagne. At that moment, all the 
leaders who remain to us will be assembled to feast 
their first victory. My brother, with three battalions 
which are ours, will mount guard over their debauch. 
The movement of troops will start from the east, and go 
in the direction both of the gate of Rome and of 
Babylon: it will reach them in an hour. 


HERENIEN 


The gate of Rome is too near the Palace and the Regency. 
The first part of the troops must enter by the gate of 
Babylon, and spread through the quarters of the people. 
Ah! you will see what our people are like, how they 
will receive you, cheer for you, breathe into you a 
stormy and courageous soul. You will pass on your 
way two barracks, the soldiers of which will join yours ; 
and you will be in the heart of the city while the 
Regency is still deaf and sleeping. 

Only then will you present yourselves at the gate of Rome. 
The consternation of our masters and their partisans 
will be in your favour. Only the five hundred consular 
guards will remain faithful to them. All the other 
troops lodged in the Palace will receive you with en- 
thusiasm. If there is any fighting between the guards 
and us, leave our men to settle the affair. Keep out of 
any sort of quarrel. You need not fire a single shot. 


HorbDaAIN 


We will do scrupulously what you tell us to do. 


88 


act u1.sc.u. THE DAWN 


HERENIEN 


It is only you, the conquerors, who could realise our dream. 
Revolutions always begin by the renunciation of a 
privilege: you renounce victory. 


AN OFFICER 


It was only our King who wanted war. 


HAINEAU 


Ah, and truly your attack was unjust, your beginning of 
the campaign... 


HorpDain (interrupting) 


For the last time, let us have things quite clear. My 
brother will look after the leaders. At eight o’clock 
three thousand men will enter by the gate of Babylon. 
Then the gate of Rome opens to let in more battalions. 
No trumpets, no flags, not a shot fired, no singing. The 
entry will be sudden, peaceful, and silent. Is that it? 


HERENIEN 


Perfect; we will see to the rest. Oppidomagne is ready; 
she awaits you. In an hour you will have the whole 
city yours. 

And now, let us separate; do not leave time for objections 
to come forward, they are weakening, enervating. Our 
sole tactics shall be: sudden, and bold! Tull to-morrow, 
then, yonder! 

[They shake hands and separate. Hordain and 
Heérénien entbrace. 


89 


THE DAWN ACT Iv. Sc. I. 


ACT TV 
ScENE I 


Abode of Hérénien. Same as in first and second acts. The child is 
playing. Claire stands anxiously at the window. 


THE CHILD 
What dress shall I put on, Polichinelle? 
CLAIRE 


The prettiest. 


THe CHILD 
Is it a holiday? 


CLAIRE 
The finest holiday of all. 
THE CHILD 
Is it Christmas? 
CLAIRE 


It is Easter, the real Easter: the first there has ever been 
in the world. 
THE CHILD 
May I go, if it is a holiday? 
CLAIRE 


It is a holiday for grown-up people; a holiday that chil- 
dren don’t understand. 


go 


ACT IV. SC. I. THE DAWN 


THE CHILD 


Tell me what it is. 


CLAIRE 


You will know, one day. You can say then that it is your 


father, your own father, who made it. 


THE CHILD 
Will there be lots of flags? 


CLAIRE 
Lots. 
THE CHILD 
Then why do you say I should not understand? 


there are flags, I always understand. 


CLairE (from the window) 
At last! 
[Hérénien enters with clothes in disorder. 
rushes towards him. 
HERENIEN (embracing her feverishly) 


You know all? 


CLAIRE 


I guess, without knowing. Tell me. 


HERENIEN 


When 


Claire 


Things never happen as one imagines they are going to. 
I was convinced that none of our chiefs would be at 
the Gate of Babylon: they never are. Yesterday 


OI 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. I. 


evening, the oldest of them went there. When they 
saw the enemy at hand, they thought it was an act of 
sheer madness. It was not an attack: the order of the 
troops, the absence of commanders, the lack of organi- 
sation, proved it. It was not parleyers: there were too 
many. 

When the troops were a hundred yards away, some threw 
away their arms, others raised the butt ends of their 
muskets. Without a word, some of our men ran and 
opened the gates. Our chiefs struggled, shouted, 
stormed, all together: no one listened to their abuse 
nor to their orders. All the presentiments they had 
had, all the fears of defection, of treason, which they 
dared not admit, must have stabbed and tortured and 
prostrated them. In a lightning-flash, they understood 
all. They were surrounded. Three of them were 
killed: they were brave men. They saw the enemy 
enter Oppidomagne; they believed it meant defeat, the 
shame of the last humiliation. Some wept. Our men 
flung themselves into the arms of the besiegers. There 
was hand-shaking, embracing. A sudden joy flashed 
through the souls of all. Swords, knapsacks, car- 
tridges were thrown away. The enemy, whose wine- 
skins were full, offered drink. And the flood, always 
bigger and bigger, flows on towards the city and the 
National Square; our chiefs stand there, pale, mute, 
incredulous. “It is the end of the war,” cried Le 
Breux, in the ear of a commander. ‘“ There is neither 
victory nor defeat: it is holiday.” Thereupon the 
brute began to swear, mad with rage, striking out 
blindly with his sabre, wounding his horse. Two of 


Q2 


ACT IV. SC. I. THE DAWN 


his neighbours fled in the midst of the confusion. They 
went in the direction of the Regency: they will or- 
ganise perhaps a semblance of resistance, and the con- 
sular guard will second them. I have already seen 
their green uniforms roving about near here. 


CLAIRE 


But the generals of the enemy? 


HERENIEN 


Oh! they are the prisoners of their own army. Yester- 
day, seeing the troops reduced to half by sickness and 
desertion, they wanted, in their last despair, to make 
a great assault. The soldiers refused to advance; 
some of them fired on their leaders. That ended 
everything. 


CLAIRE 


I have heard the troops pouring into Oppidomagne; it is 
like the sound of the sea. Never was I at once so 
happy and so trembling. 


HERENIEN 


Twenty thousand men are now in our midst. Tables are 
set up in the squares. All those who, during the siege, 
had hidden away victuals in their cellars, distribute 
them to the people. Haineau said: “ Never will Op- 
pidomagne abase itself to the point of receiving its ene- 
mies; never will Oppidomagne permit them to walk 
about its streets and squares; never will the prejudices 
of humiliated Oppidomagne be effaced.” One reasons 
in that way in normal times: but to-day! 


os 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. I. 


There is such a confusion in accepted ideas that one could 
found new religions and proclaim new beliefs. Look, 
up there, on the heights, the Capitol is in flames! 
They are burning down the palaces of the Artillery 
and of the Navy. Before to-night, all the reserves of 
arms and ammunitions will have been served out. 

During the siege, justice made for itself banks and ex- 
changes. The hour of doing justice to the fundamental 
injustice, war, has come in its turn. Only with it will 
the others disappear too: the hate of the country for the 
city, of poverty for gold, of distress for power. The 
organisation of evil has been struck to the heart. 
(Hurrahs are heard in the street.) Listen: it is the 
universal human holiday, wild and shouting. 

[Claire and Hérénien go towards the window, and 
meet in along embrace. All at once Hérénien dis- 
engages himself sharply. 


HERENIEN 
Dress the child; I came to look for him, so that he might 
see my work. 
CLAIRE 
The child? But he will not understand. 


HERENIEN 


Dress him all the same; I shall say to him, in the presence 
of a world’s death, words that he will never forget. 
Dress him, that I may take him with me. 


CLAIRE 
And I? 
94 


ACT IV. SC. I. THE DAWN 


HERENIEN 


Your brother Haineau will come for you. 


CLAIRE 


Why can’t we all go together? 


HERENIEN 


Dress the child, I tell you, and be quick. 
[Claire goes out. Hérénien looks over his desk, puts 
some papers in his pocket, then leans from the win- 
dow, and harangues the people. 


HERENIEN 


O bitter, shining, and rebellious life 

That I have lived and suffered, how it seems 

A rest and light and glory to me now! 

I feel myself the greater by this conquered world, 

Drawn from the depths to light, by these mere human 
hands. 

Doubtless it was decreed, a farmer of the plains 

Should first be born to give me being, me, 

That hugely, with these fingers and these hands of mine, 

And with these teeth of mine, should grip the throat of the 
law, 

And bring to ground the ancient pride of bloody powers! 

The countryside, from farm to farm, from hut to hut, 

Died. In the cities where I came 

The universal will 

Had fallen on such a depth 

Of moral carnage: theft, and lechery, and gold, 

Howled at each other and crushed each other, thronged 


05 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. I. 


In monstrous hordes of mutual murderous violences. 

All the old instincts killed each other, in the narrow lists 

Of the pot house or the counting-house. 

The formidable and accomplice government 

Drew for its nourishment and for its bane 

The sap of life from those most filthy dunghills, 

And swelled with rotten fulness and content. 

I was the lightning shining at the window 

Where certain stood to watch the portents of the sky ; 

And, less by any skill or any plans of mine 

Than by some unknown wild supremacy of love 

For the whole wide world, I know not from my very self, 

I burst the bolts that held 

The brotherhood of man 

In prison-walls. 

The old Oppidomagne I have cast under me — 

Charters, abuses, favours, dogmas, memories — 

And see her now arise, the future city of man, 

Forged by the thunderbolt, and wholly mine, 

Who gaze and see the fire of my immortal thought 

And my unconquered folly and ardour realised 

Shine and become the light in the fixed eyes of fate! 
[Shots are heard. 


Ciaire (from her room) 
Hérénien, the Regent’s soldiers are coming into the street. 


HERENIEN (not hearing, continues) 
I have made the world again in my own image, 
I have lifted up the people and their fruitful powers 
Out of the night of instinct to the vast 
And clear and radiant threshold of my pride. 


96 


ACT IV. Sc. I. THE DAWN 


CLAIRE (re-entering) 
Hérénien! Hérénien! Armed men are watching the house. 
They will kill you, if you go out. 
HERENIEN 


Come, come! Dress the child. . [Renewed firing. 


CLAIRE 


The shots are coming nearer to the square. 


HERENIEN 
Dress the child. 
CLAIRE 


They are spying on you; they are waiting for you; they want 
to take your life. . 


HERENIEN 
Dress the child. 


[She goes to fetch the child, who trembles, takes it in 
her arms, and protects tt. 


CLAIRE 


My friend, I beg of you, do not venture out; wait till they 
have passed. 


HERENIEN 
I have no time to wait. To-day I have no fear, either of 


others or of myself. I have risen to that point of 
human strength. 


CLAIRE 


Go then by yourself, and leave me the child. 
97 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. I. 


HERENIEN (with violence) 


I want the child. I want him there, by my side. 


CLAIRE 


He shall come soon. Haineau will bring him to you. 


HERENIEN 
He must be cheered with his father. Give him to me, 
come, give him to me. 


CLAIRE 


I have never resisted you. I obey you always, like a slave, 
but to-day, I entreat you. . . 


HERENIEN 
Give him to me, I tell you. 
[He tears the child from the arms of Claire, thrusts 
her back, and rushes out with him. 


CLAIRE 
My friend! my friend! Oh! that madness! Always. his 
poor, colossal madness! 

[An immediate sound of firing arrests her. After a 
moment of frantic anguish, she runs to the window. 
and leans out, crying: 

My son! my son! 

[Then she rushes into the street. Noise of horses 
galloping away. Tumult. Clamours. A_ silence. 
Then, dominating all the others: 


A VoIcE 
Jacques Hérénien is assassinated! 


98 


ACT IV. SC. II. THE DAWN 


ScENneE II 


Morninc. The Place of the People, laid out entirely in terraces. In 
the background is seen the panorama of Oppidomagne, veiled in 
the smoke of conflagration. To the right, the statue of the 
Regency, in full view, on a platform. To the left, the Palace 
of War is burning. Townspeople deck the windows with flags; 
drunken men pass. Wild dances cross the scene; bands succeed 
bands. Songs are heard on all sides. Boys throw stones at the 
statue of the Regency. 


A BEGGAR 


Now then, ragamuffins, look out, you'll have your ears 
pulled. 


Tue Boys 


—We are throwing stones at the Regency, because it’s dead. 
—(throwing a stone). Here goes for the sceptre. 
—Here goes for the crown. 


BANbs (surrounding the statue and singing catches) 


And count by four and count by three: 

The men of mettle, who are they? 

They who reject the soldier’s pay, 

To wrest their rights wherever wrongs may be, 
And win their way to liberty. 


And count by three and count by two: 
The men of mettle, who are they? 

They are the men whose hearts are gay 
When cities of gold and fire and fever brew 
The cup of the wrath of God for you. 


99 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. Il. 


And count by two and count by one: 

The men of mettle, who are they? 

They who with one hand’s hammer bray 

To dust the dusty hopes and powers that shun 
The light of their chief, the light of the sun. 


A PEASANT 


Hang me if I ever thought to see Oppidomagne again! 


GROUP OF BEGGARS 


—I hid myself in a hole, like a beast. 

—TI took turns in serving both parties. The Oppidomagne 
people called me the mole: I let them into all the 
projects of the enemy; and the enemy thought me as 
subtle as smoke: I kept them posted in the goings on 
at Oppidomagne. 

—We did the same. I worked north. 

—And I, west. 

—By betraying the both of them, we have ended by settling 
their differences (ironically). We have made peace. 


A GIpsy 
Isn’t there always a moment when what is called crime be- 
comes virtue ? 
A BEGGAR 


Is it true Hérénien is dead? 


THE GIPsy 


He! he is master and king now. People don’t die when 
they are so great as that. 
100 


ACT IV. SC. II. THE DAWN 


A BEGGAR 
They killed him at his very door. 


THE Grpsy 
Who did? 

A BEGGAR 
The Consulars. 

THE GIPSY 
Impossible! 

A BEGGAR 


They might well wish him ill! Never man accomplished 
so great a work. 


THE GIpsy 


It is not a man, it is all of us who have done it. 


THE SHEPHERD 


At last we shall be able to find a living! 


THE GIpsy 


We! Come now! the soil of humanity would have to be 
quite differently turned up if the light is to come into 
our holes and corners. Peace or war, 


Still we remain unchanging misery, 

Nothing avails to us the idle come and go 

Of sorrow or of joy. 

Though with new laws Oppidomagne 

Should this day set its bitted, bridled people free, 

We only shall remain, God only knows till when, 
IOI 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. II. 


The birds of prey, the wandering birds, 

That, little piece by piece, tear up the greedy earth, 

Like crows that rich men frighten from their homes, 

Chasing them from their thresholds and their orchard- 
plots, 

Although they give free welcome there 

To the whole race of birds as free. 


THE SHEPHERD 


You speak as if the Regency still lived. The country will 
be reborn. The cities are purging themselves. 


THE GIPSY 


Fortunately! everything is only a going towards something, 
and to-morrow will always be dissatisfied with to-day. 
[A troop of drunken women crosses the scene, with 
torches. They shout: “To the churches! to the 

churches! Burn down God!” To the beggar: 
Look at those, there are your allies! When you and your 
friends have decided to be really men, come and look 

for me, as others went and found Hérénien. 

(He goes away.) 


Group oF WORKMEN 


[Putting up a platform on which to lay the corpse of 
Hérénien. They bring the black cloth. 
—This is a bad business if there ever was one. 
—He had two shots there, in the forehead. 
—Was his son killed? 
—No. 
—Nobody knows which of the guards were the assassins. 
They got away. Perhaps we shall never know the 
102 


ACT IV. SC. II. THE DAWN 


name of the abominable coward who killed our tribune. 
—There was fighting, outside the Regency. It took an 
hour to dislodge the consulars. Hérénien was already 
dead. 
A BEGGAR 
They say Haineau killed him. 


A WorKMAN 


Haineau? You don’t know what you are talking about! 
Haineau! why he is more distressed about it than we 
are. 


A BEGGAR 
He was his enemy. 


THE WorRKMAN 


Be silent; you lie by all the teeth in your jaws. 


Tue BEGGAR 
I say what I was told. 


THE WoRKMAN 


It is people like you who start all the foul stories. 
[Enemies and soldiers of Oppidomagne pass along 
arm in arm; and crowd on the terrace and steps. 


THE Crowpb 


—Will the holiday come off? 
—Why not? It is the new leaders of Oppidomagne who 
ordered it. 
—Never did Hérénien seem so great as in his death. 
103 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. II. 


GROUP OF PASSERS 


—They carry him through the whole city in triumph. 

—I saw him crossing the Marble Square. There was a 
red wound across his face. 

—And I, I saw him pass the Haven Bridge; 

Mothers with lifted arms 

Held out their little ones to him, 

So that all young and joyous things 

That life can offer to a man 

Hovered and bent above this man in death. 


—He passes, garlanded with dedicated flowers; 
The scarlet shroud enfolds him in a light of flames; 
His body: 

A very storm of love, like waves of the sea, 

Billows him high and holds him over all men’s heads; 
Never did king, shining with gold, 

With blood, with murder, and with battles, 

Have at his death 

So glorious and so kingly great a funeral. 


—At the Colonnades, a young man made his way up to 
the litter. He dipped his handkerchief in the blood 
on the cheeks, and long and fervently, as if he re- 
ceived the host, he put it to his lips. 


A WorxkMan (who has heard them talking) 


Jacques Hérénien will be laid out here, on this platform, 
here, in our midst, in all his glory. 


A PEASANT 
It is good for the sun to see him. 
104 


ACT IV. SC. II. THE DAWN 


GROUP OF PASSERS 


—Tears, flowers, songs, blood, dances, fire: all conflicting 
ardours burn in the air! 

—It is the right atmosphere when new worlds are created. 

[dn immense influx; Le Breux, followed by soldiers 

and workmen, goes upon the step before a house 

and makes sign that he wishes to speak. Silence. 


Le Breux 


Citizens, in a few moments, you will see in this square of 
Oppidomagne, dedicated to the people, the body of 
Jacques Hérénien. Receive him as a conqueror. A 
few shots have been enough to close his eyes, stiffen 
his arms, immobilise his face, but not to kill him. 
Jacques Hérénien lives still, in his words, in his acts, 
in his thought, in his books; he is the force which 
now exalts us; he wills, thinks, hopes, acts in us. This 
is not his burial, it is his last victory. Stand back: he 
comes. 

[Children climb up on people’s shoulders. Enormous 
anxiety in all groups. People get on the windows, 
climb columns. 


DIFFERENT GROUPS ON THE TERRACES 


—What a crowd! The square will never hold them! 
—How they loved him! People like that ought never to 
die. 


Group OF WoMEN 


—His wife follows the bier. 
—It is she who is carrying the child. 
105 


THE DAWN ACT Iv. sc. I. 


—She is a Christian! 
—A Roman! 
—Silence; here is the body. 

[The bier comes forward, and is borne round the 
square ; some weep, others-cheer, others fall on their 
knees, some women make the sign of the cross. 
On the terraces, clusters of people squeeze together 
to see better. 


Younc MEN 

[Marching before the body. With prayer and ex- 

ultation. 
—Hérénien, Hérénien, you were our only master! 
—There is not any spark of all my thought 
You fanned not with your ardour, like a mighty wind. 
—Heérénien, Hérénien, ’tis you survive in us! 
We vow and dedicate to you 
All that our souls one day 
Shall fashion us of beauty and of strength and light 
And purity in life! 


—Heérénien, Hérénien, your memory 
Shall be the pulse and heart-beat of the times to come! 


—Hérénien, Hérénien, enliven us 
That we be always thus, these mad and vehement ones, 
That, in ill times, 
Now past, your impulse hurried 
Out of our weak and wandering ways 
Into the whirlwind of your might! 
[The corpse is set down on the platform; women 
cover the black cloth with flowers. 
106 


ACT Iv. SC. II. THE DAWN 


THE SEER 

[Standing on one of the terraces above the crowd. 
What hour is near? 
Sounds, not of tears, I hear. 
This is indeed the hour 
When, fatal to the gods, thunder has rolled 
To cast them down, haggard and old, 
Since sudden truth shines out, in vindicating power! 


The hope of man is now again made flesh; 

The old desire, replenished with new flowers, new youth, 

Springs from the earth; now eyes have light and hearts 
have truth, 

And these magnetic rays bind soul to soul afresh. 


And now with shining palms veil over and hide deep 
This mortuary crape that covers one asleep; 

And now beware lest you profane 

The worship and the fame 

Of so pure, powerful, and divine a name, 

Or this dead man has died in vain. 


He was in harmony with the new birth 

That waits the world, and with the stars, and time; 

He has won life through mortal tumult, mortal crime; 

He has crushed under him one of the plagues of earth! 

[Hordain rises in agitation. The crowd point to him 
and cheer. People tell one another who he 1s. 
Tue Crowp 
—It was he who refused to attack Oppidomagne. 
—RHe won over the enemy. 


—He is as great as Hérénien. 
107 


THE DAWN AGT IVs SCicIE, 


HorpDain (pointing to the corpse) 


I was his disciple, and his unknown friend. His books 
were my Bible. It is men like this who give birth 
to men like me, humble, faithful, long obscure, but 
whom fortune permits, in one overwhelming hour, to 
realise the supreme dream of their master. If father- 
lands are fair, sweet to the heart, dear to the memory, 
armed nations on the frontiers are tragic and deadly; 
and the whole world is yet bristling with nations. It 
is in their teeth that we give them this example of 
our concord. (Cheers.) They will understand some 
day the immortal thing accomplished here, in this 
illustrious Oppidomagne, whence the loftiest ideas of 
humanity have taken flight, one after another, through 
all the ages. For the first time since the beginning of 
power, since brains have reckoned time, two races, one 
renouncing its victory, the other its humbled pride, are 
made one in an embrace. The whole earth must needs 
have quivered, all the blood, all the sap of the earth 
must have flowed to the heart of things. Concord and 
goodwill have conquered hate. (Cheers.) Human 
strife, in its form of bloodshed, has been gainsaid. A 
new beacon shines on the horizon of future storms. Its | 
steady rays shall dazzle all eyes, haunt all brains, mag- 
netise all desires. Needs must we, after all these trials 
and sorrows, come at last into port, to whose entrance 
it points the way, and where it gilds the tranquil masts 
and vessels. : 

[Enthusiasm of all: the people shout and embrace. 
The former enemies rise and surround Hordain. 
Those of Oppidomagne stretch their arms towards 


108 


‘ACT IV. SC. Il. THE DAWN 


him. He disengages himself from them and lays 
palms at the feet of Hérémen. Then turning to- 
wards the widow: 

In the name of life and the triumph of life, I demand of 
you, Claire Hérénien, to present to these too exultant 
people, him who seems to us to be Jacques Hérénien 
himself: his son! (He holds out his arms to present 
the child.) 


CLAIRE (staying him) 
I want to have strength to do it myself. (She rises). 
Here, in the city’s very heart, 
Here, at this moment great with hope, 
Upon this threshold of new days, that bring 
A new beginning to the world; 
Drying my tears, and calling on my will, 
I dare confide to you this child, child of his flesh, 
I dare devote this child to proud, to tragic duty, 
To that chimera, dazzling and divine, 
His father bridled and broke in and rode. 
I offer him to the future, jubilant in this place 
Of feast and insurrection aureoled, 
Here in this place of joy and sorrow, even here 
Before you all, before the feet of this slain man 
Who was Hérénien, and is dead! 

[Claire holds up the child in her arms for some time 
in the midst of cheers and waving of arms, then 
passes him to Hordain, and, unable to control her- 
self any longer, falls sobbing on the corpse. Silence 
comes slowly. 


109 


THE DAWN ACT Iv. Sc. Il. 


Le Breux 


This hour is too great and too beautiful, it binds us too 
intimately to each other, for us to think of oaths or 
terms of peace. In full liberty, in face of all that re- 
mains, inviolate and sacred, in face of this man of 
genius, whose murdered body and immortal soul en- 
fever and inspire us, we give ourselves, each to each, 
for ever! [| Cheers. 


HorpDAIN 


Yesterday, when with open hands and hearts we entered the 
city, I was amazed that he who more than all of us 
had realised our work should be present, in life, at 
his triumph. So great a conquest required so great 
a victim. If you consider under what strange circum- 
stances Hérénien, without escort, without arms, of- 
fered himself to perhaps the last shot that was fired, 
you will believe, as I do, that his death is bound up in 
the mystery of the great and sovereign powers. 


HAINEAU 


He broke under him the old power whose image still stands 
upright. 

[He points to the statue; there are cries: “ Pull it 
down! Pull it down!” Workmen seize crowbars 
to pull it down, and mount the pedestal. 

He conquered its spawn, its dastard consuls, its bastard 
laws, its shameful customs, its paid armies. 


THE CROWD 


Pull it down! Pull it down! 
IIo 


ACT IV. SC. II. THE DAWN 


HAINEAU 


He purged its thieving banks, its treasury, its parliaments 
and its councils: he slew all antagonisms. That image 
mocks his action. 


[He points to the statue. 


THE CRowp 
—Oh! the old brute! 


—Luckless doll! 
—Horrible drab! 

ON ALL SIDES 
Pull it down! Pull it down! 


THE Crowp 


—Throw it into the sewers! 
—Break it! Smash it to pieces! 
—Pullit down! Pull it down! 


SOMEONE FROM THE FIELDS 
It was that that devoured us! 


SOMEONE FROM THE CITIES 


It was that that blighted us! 


SOMEONE FROM THE FIELDS 


It was death! 


SOMEONE FROM THE CITIES 


It was crime! 
TTT 


THE DAWN ACT IV. SC. Il. 


ON ALL SIDES 


Pull it down! Pull it down! 


A WorkKMAN (from the pedestal, to those around) 


Look out: it is going to fall, it is going to fall! 

[/n the midst of outcries of hate the huge statue tot- 
ters and falls. There is immediate silence. Then 
Haineau seizes the head, which remains intact, and, 
staggering under its colossal weight, flings it and 
breaks it, without a word, at the feet of Hérénien. 


THE SEER 


Now let the Dawn arise! 


II2 


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